


From Your Point of View

by TheGrinningKitten



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Bodyswap, Love/Hate, M/M, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2020-01-23 13:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18550681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGrinningKitten/pseuds/TheGrinningKitten
Summary: They say that to understand another person you should imagine yourself in their place. But what are you to do when you're pretty much forced into the body of your sworn enemy?





	1. There’s No Such Thing as “Good Morning”

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [С твоей точки зрения](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/475285) by Sion. 



> General warnings for all chapters: swearing and (possibly) violence.  
> Extra warnings will be given for chapters if needed.  
> Tags are subject to change.
> 
> Special thanks to ThyneOwnSlave ([DA](https://www.deviantart.com/thyneownslave)/[AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictorianEmpress/profile)) for being my beta-reader/editor for the translation!

**** The awakening was painful. All of his bones ached, as if ready to fall apart, and that wasn’t unusual per se. It wasn’t the first time Error ended up in such a state — especially when he ended up getting into a good fight with that damned ink stain.

However this time something was off. Sure, his bones were aching, but they weren’t burning — and he wouldn’t have mistaken the feeling of the glitches covering his body for anything. Whether anyone touched him or not, the sensation was ever-present — usually weak and one he’d been long-accustomed to, but the glitches never  _ disappeared _ .

Upon noticing that odd fact, the destroyer got up sharply and opened his eyes, trying to grasp what was going on, but only ended up adding to his pile of questions. Bright yellow light surrounded him instead of the ever-white one. He wasn’t in the Anti-Void, that’s for sure. Damn, did he end up in one of the AUs? Just what he needed — to end up unconscious hell knows where.

Luckily, the place was familiar. The soft golden space was filled with hanging sheets of paper. Hundreds. Thousands of them. And each of them was a whole world.

“Doodle Sphere…” he mumbled in astonishment — noting that his eyesight was oddly sharp and not at all misted — but immediately choked at the sound of his own voice. It wasn’t glitching and, moreover, sounded painfully… familiar? Hell, he’d know that voice from any other!

Holding his breath, Error looked down at himself and instantly regretted that.  _ Deeply  _ regretted that. He was sure that he’d crash and reboot right there and then, but the body’s reaction was different, only adding to the madness: a sudden wave of nausea made him bend over, and a moment later there was a considerable puddle of ink next to him.

Right. Inks. Ink. The chemical taste burned his tongue — the only one, just like he’d suspected. The realization was sudden, and each passing second only served to confirm it. There was the familiar, horribly infuriating beige clothing, which there was too much of for a single skeleton, the blue jacket tied around the hips and the obscenely long scarf. Reaching backwards with his shaking hand, he felt one more ever-present feature of the artist’s get-up: the enormous paintbrush. It was almost taller than him, yet he hadn’t noticed it at all up until now.

Upon weighing it in his hand and even throwing it in the air experimentally, Error was surprised to find that the brush was pretty light — surprised because he’d held it in his hands more than once before, after tearing the odd weapon out of the short stack’s hands during battles, and knew for sure that it wasn’t just big but also heavy. Which served as a basis for numerous questions and jests as to how the other was even capable of moving so swiftly while wielding it.

Putting the brush aside, the glitch continued to go over the oddities. Yet another one was that — despite the evident switch into the damned ink stain’s body for no known reason — he was in no panic. This seemed like a bad dream or, really, a full-blown nightmare, like the ones his black slimeball of an acquaintance sent at times — by the by, if the octopus had anything to do with this, he was in for a world of pain — and in this kind of situation he was supposed to be panicking, angry, scared, ripping the place to pieces in righteous fury, but there was no reaction beyond the recent eruption of ink.

Error was calm — surprisingly calm by his standards — and he absolutely couldn’t understand why. However, now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember ever seeing Ink terrified of anything, much less depressed or desperate. No, that rainbow asshole always infuriated him with his ever-present smile and talk of love, peace and friendship. Even when space itself was ripping at its seams and worlds were torn apart by his strings — even then it never looked like the ink stain was bothered. Sure, in those cases he turned more serious, but he definitely never got angry and stopped his nonsense until he drank…

“The paints!”

He glanced over the colourful vials. Error had no idea what their purpose was. Ink never used them to paint, but sometimes he drank out of them. The glitch never took any interest in it — everyone had their own quirks, and what did it matter what was on the walking palette’s mind?

However, one of the colours he was familiar with. The gloved hand reached out and pulled out the red vial. Right. This was the colour his enemy drank in front of him during their battles, and usually, after that happened, the glitch had to hurry to get away while he was still in one piece. Whether he liked to admit it or not, Ink was a formidable foe when he took their fights seriously — and he only did that after drinking from that vial. Though he’d never drunk all of it, and Error was tempted to force the short stack to down the whole thing just to see the result. So far he’d never gotten a chance though: the artist protected the paints like the apple of his eye, not letting him get anywhere near the cherished vials even during the most violent of fights.

Now the glitch’s curiosity had awoken. And even though the idea of drinking unknown substances, while he already had enough trouble dealing with the alien body, was definitely not the brightest one — when would he ever get another chance to find out all the most treasured secrets and weaknesses of the rainbow asshole? Of course, downing the whole vial would be the peak of insanity, but, although Error admitted he was a psycho, he was in no hurry to put his life on the line, so he popped the vial open and only barely licked at the red colour.

He waited, trying to figure out what had changed, but it seemed nothing had happened — only the situation he was in grew two times more infuriating. Seriously. Okay, so he was stuck in someone else’s skin — but  _ Ink _ of all people? Why did he have to end up inside the most infuriating ink stain in the whole Multiverse?! If that was someone’s sick joke, then he’d gladly help that masochistic jokester join their sense of humor in the afterlife — after torturing them thoroughly first, of course. For example, he could slowly grind them into dust, piece by piece, or…

Error paused. Previously calm thoughts were boiling with fury, and now he recognized himself in them. He squinted at the vial and hesitantly took another lick, already having a vague guess as to what would happen. He instantly realized that his desire to describe his current predicament using only swear words had grown exponentially, and he was itching to pick up the paintbrush and bludgeon someone to death, since his strings were unavailable. The corners of his mouth twitched in a horrifying semblance of a smile.

“Anger, huh? That’s why you can’t fight properly without this muck. Well, note to self: make you take a swig of red first and only then go for insults and jests. Maybe, that’ll teach ya. Hm… but that means… Don’t tell me that the others?...”

Pensive, he took off the sash and examined the palette. He didn’t want to try them at random. Who knew what the consequences would be? He struggled to remember whether he’d ever seen Ink drink other colours, at the same time hoping he didn’t inherit the goldfish memory along with the body.

Hey, he  _ had _ seen it! There was that one case, back when they’d come across each other in Outertale for the first time. Error came there to get away from everything, as he did from time to time — and that’s when that damned ink stain suddenly invaded his favorite islet.

Just his luck! This universe was as enormous as the expanse of space surrounding it — but no, Ink just had to open a portal exactly to the piece of rock Error had chosen.

At first, of course, the guardian tensed and took a battle stance, all ready to fight and mumbling his usual nonsense about the beauty of this universe, but Error wasn’t in the mood to kick the shit out of the rainbow bastard. So the glitch just brushed him off with a bunch of insults about how his brains must’ve turned into ink and joined the vomit on the way out — and, anyway, he wasn’t planning to destroy anything.

Ironically, the other threw up then and there, as if to illustrate the glitch’s insult, which Error instantly brought attention to, but soon returned to what he was doing before he was so rudely interrupted — knitting.

That’s when he saw the other messing with the vial from the corner of his eye. Ink spent a while going over them until he settled on the green one. Taking a sip of the paint, the guardian looked at him wide-eyed and showered him in hesitant questions:  _ Did Error really not want to destroy this universe? Was he sick? Did the guardian finally succeed in getting through to the glitch and making him stop? _ That last question earned the poor artist a shot of strings, which almost tore his favorite paintbrush to pieces, and an annoyed excuse that he’d destroy this AU just like the others, only later.

After that — apparently under the effects of that same colour plus the additional half -a-vial of yellow that he’d downed — Ink started to pester him about his unfinished craftwork, praising the neat stitches and showing amazement at the devoted destroyer being able to create. Then his attention turned to the red-rimmed glasses the other had donned, thinking he was alone, and didn’t have the time to hide when the rainbow bastard came. Upon getting glitchy answers and a furious rant about how he hated the ink stain and how he’d better be good and shut up unless he wanted the universe to end up destroyed, Ink calmed down a bit and continued to drink the yellow paint, beaming more and more.

What came after was probably the first time they’d managed to have a conversation that was more or less peaceful and even… pleasant? Either way, during the second half of the conversation Error heard his enemy talk of something else besides the offers of friendship and rants about the beauty of AUs — those always sounded so similar it was a wonder that Ink’s hole-ridden memory managed to preserve and bestow on him that pile of words time after time.

But that wasn’t important now. What’s important was that it was the only time he saw Ink drink yellow paint in front of him, even though, according to what he knew — or sometimes even saw through his one-way portals — Ink kept that paint for meetings with his beloved friends from the “Star Sanses”. Really, with a name like that the only thing those guys deserved was enough of an ass-kicking to see stars.

Error quickly pulled out the yellow vial. He already had a fairly good guess as to what its purpose was — as he did for the green vial, though he was less certain about that one. He tested it just as carefully, focused on what he was experiencing and, just like he’d thought, his thoughts gained a much more positive tone, even though the anger hadn’t gone anywhere. Now the destroyer kept imagining how he would use his newly acquired knowledge against Ink to make him suffer for real, or how he’d enjoy finding the person responsible for all of this and getting his revenge. Besides, he’s in the Doodle Sphere right now! The AUs are all there, right before his eyes, and destroying them would be a breeze! Ha! This situation was much  _ brighter _ than he’d imagined. Smirking at the mental pun, he voiced his guess out loud.

“This isn’t pure happiness. More like… gloating.”

Huh, that was interesting. There weren’t that many base colours there, and no matter how he tried, Ink wouldn’t have been able to recreate the full wealth of emotions with such a limited palette. Seemed like blending was at play here.

“That rainbow shithead! Even his emotions are artsy. Just how many combinations are there, and how does he keep all of them committed to memory? Although… who said he does?”

He pulled off the scarf now as well. Then looked himself over, said to hell with it and got rid of all the unnecessary — in his opinion — clothing, leaving on just the t-shirt and shorts and feeling much more comfortable as a result.

Upon tugging off the gloves, he found out that the bones beneath them were gray rather than white, but considering all the other sudden revelations, he wasn’t all that surprised by this one. Though he suspected the lack of heavy shock was also a consequence of Ink’s system missing the corresponding colour. Squinting at the green vial, Error decided that he’d rather stay if not sane, then at least more or less calm. Besides, he still wasn’t sure what the exact meaning of the colour was.

He had to keep the leggings though. The very thought of seeing the rainbow asshole completely naked while stuck in his body almost made him throw up again.

After celebrating the relative freedom of motion, he returned his attention to the scarf. It was covered with tiny scribbles of a pretty elegant handwriting, but there was so much of it that Error regretted being unable to convert all of that information into code. No, seriously! Writing everything down like that was probably hard enough, but how could Ink find anything in that mess? Hoping there was at least some logic to the guardian’s thoughts, he guessed that the most important notes would be kept where they’d be easy to reach. For example… On the part of the scarf that ended up wrapped around his neck and where it could easily be read just by tugging the fabric away from the throat and looking on the inner side of it.

After examining the fabric — for some reason it felt more like canvas or soft papyrus to touch — Error, apparently not without the yellow paint’s effects, grinned. His guess was confirmed, and the notes he needed were even written in a larger handwriting than the rest. The list only included core blends and their proportions, but that was enough. Above the list, written in red and underlined a few times, was the line, “Never and under no circumstances drink a whole vial of pure colour all at once! Unless it’s white. Never!”

Error shuddered but decided not to argue this time and push his curiosity down. Whatever the end result was, if Ink was so adamant about avoiding it, then there had to be a good reason for that. And he’d make sure to check out those consequences, but only once he was back in his own familiar glitchy body. By the way… Wait, what had happened to his own body?!

“Dammit! You should’ve asked that question a lot earlier, idiot, yet here you are, going through the short stack’s stuff!”

The destroyer plopped down onto the ground and tried to remember what had happened before he woke up here. Strangely enough… he got nothing. Last thing his memory could supply was how he was about to watch some Undernovela in peace. Nothing indicated the impending crisis. He wasn’t planning to destroy anything, so there wasn’t a single reason why he’d come across Ink. Though, how long ago was that?

The Anti-Void, the Omega Timeline and the Doodle Sphere all shared the same peculiar feature: those spaces weren’t Alternative Universes in the usual sense. They existed kind of above the AUs, beyond the time and space of the other worlds. So time pretty much didn’t exist here. You could spend an hour in any of them, go visit the universes and find out that in each of them you’d been gone for a different amount of time. That happened because time passed differently in different worlds, not to mention the resets that constantly started its count anew.

On a positive note, nothing ever spoiled inside the Anti-Void and everything remained the way you’d left it there. On a less positive note, scheduling meetings on the Multiversal scale was problematic, to put it mildly. Telling when exactly a Multiversal event happened was even harder.

Error never had any need for time — not counting joining Nightmare’s gang on a few rare occasions or catching up on Undernovela. Though the latter could easily be achieved without “watching it live”, since his portals could show him the past — which, quite interestingly, included his own. Error simply went with the flow — destroyed whenever he wanted, rested whenever he wanted — and never spared time a thought.

But this was a different matter now. How long had he been gone? How long had he been unconscious? What had happened before that? Was anyone else aware of what had transpired? Where was his own body right now? And, more importantly, where was Ink? Don’t tell him that that ink stain was currently…

The sudden thought made the skeleton leap to his feet and sharply move his hand before him. Nothing happened. Glancing at the gray and white bones, he cursed and looked over the stuff still laying about. Considering the sash, the scarf and the paintbrush to be the most important of the items, Error tied the former two around his waist, then looked at the blue jacket in thought and, after hesitating a little, wore that as well — the way it was supposed to be worn and not the way the guardian did it.

After giving his get-up a picky appraisal and deciding it was good enough — even though he didn’t like the colours — he tentatively picked up the artist’s weapon. The destroyer knew that Ink moved through paints by turning his body into a puddle of ink, but had no idea how to use those abilities. Of course, he could use the papers around him to teleport to AUs, but the place he wanted to go right now — the Anti-Void — couldn’t be reached from the Doodle Sphere. On top of that, he put up an additional block on it himself, and there was no guarantee the block would respond to him while he was in the ink stain’s body.

“You have to be kidding me… What do I do now?”

He sighed heavily, considering his options. Somehow Ink could always find him the moment he started to destroy things, but he had no idea how. And even if he knew, if that ink stain really was inside his body right now, destroying an AU would be the last thing on the other’s mind — that’s something the glitch was sure of. Why was he so attached to those pathetic abominations anyway?

He glared at the sheets of paper around him. Ha! Just that simple: each and every one of them was right there in front of him — except for a few hidden or blocked off dimensions. If he had his strings right now, he could’ve ended the whole Multiverse in a heartbeat!

Actually… What was there to stop him? Putting the paintbrush behind his back, the destroyer walked to one of the papers and, without giving it a second thought, ripped the world to pieces.

He only realized just how big of a mistake that was a moment too late.

It felt as if he was torn to pieces just like the paper. His body was swallowed by a sharp pain — way worse than the worst of his system failures or even that time when Fresh (the bastard!) sneaked up on him and pressed his whole body against him. After that incident Error spent a whole month hiding in Chocotale just to calm down. Now, however, no amounts of chocolate could help.

He was shaken, electrocuted, torn to shreds, and the pain burned into his ribs like white hot metal, drawing unknown patterns. Shuddering in overwhelming pain, he expected the familiarity of a reboot, but that didn’t happen. His consciousness refused to leave him, forcing the destroyer to live through the full brunt of this torture.

Sure, Error was used to pain — got used to it a long time ago, since there were more than enough reasons for him to feel it. The ever-present glitches that grew unbearable at the slightest touch. Resets and system failures — and sometimes even full system reboots, which left him unable to move for hours, barely aware of who he was and what he was. And that’s not to mention the variety of injuries he sustained in the endless battles, some of which left him barely crawling into the Anti-Void, almost a pitiful pile of pixels, not knowing how he was still alive and whether he was alive at all.

But this dimension desperately clung to his existence, dragged him back from the deepest pits of the afterlife and always slowly but surely healed any wounds, except for mental ones. Those — just his luck! — the Anti-Void multiplied and pushed into the glitch’s skull in neat little stacks. Only, unlike hotdogs that would fall over the moment you started walking, the insanities he’d earned stuck with him surprisingly well and didn’t disappear no matter how much he thrashed about. And that realization hurt more than anything else.

But all of that paled in comparison to what he felt after the fall of just one Alternative Universe. Error had no idea how long he’d been laying there, but if felt like an eternity or two. Two and a half.

When his bones finally stopped shuddering and the eyelights returned to the dark wells of the eye-sockets, looking most like tiny explosions, the only thing the destroyer could think about was —  _ how many worlds had he erased during his existence? _ Hundreds? Thousands? More? He’d never kept count. Some were restored, and he destroyed them for the second or third time. He only considered a universe a lost cause when it would be restored more than once within a day. Sometimes the Creators were surprisingly stubborn, but that was okay — he’d return to those universes one day and destroy them all. He’d destroy them — and the rainbow asshole wouldn’t be able to do a thing.

Ink… Ink must have felt  _ that _ . He must’ve felt  _ that _ every time — Error was sure of it — yet he still came to face him, standing strong and smiling, and started a new fight. After experiencing that for himself, Error could only wonder,  _ How? _

Finally, he carefully got up, scratching his chest through the t-shirt and holding onto his ribs. They were still invisibly burning, like from glitches, and he cringed, trying to calm down, but only ended up getting more angry — at himself, at Ink, at this stupid situation and, of course, at AUs. But, despite his former wishes, the glitch reconsidered coming anywhere near the papers — at least, until everything was back to normal.  _ Then _ he’d get his revenge and put that blasted ink stain into the agony of this suffering for a long time.

But what was he to do now?...

When he was almost sure there was no way out of his current predicament, he suddenly heard his name at the back of his mind. Flinching in surprise, Error sharply turned around, but there was no one anywhere near him. Yet someone invisible kept calling him. He didn’t panic — because he simply couldn’t, and hearing voices wasn’t exactly new for him anyway. But this one had nothing in common with the familiar questioning, and  that put him on edge.

Backing away, the destroyer realized that the voice became louder near the ink patch that was left behind from his recent bout of nausea. Fighting down disgust, he followed a strange instinct and hesitantly touched the black goop, coming to instantly regret it when he felt himself being pulled inside.

The disgusting liquid darkness swallowed everything, enveloping his body on all sides. It almost felt as if his body had become a part of this madness, when the pressure of the darkness gave way to unbearable whiteness.

Ignoring his aching head, he looked around and felt a wave of joy. The Anti-Void. He was home — white, empty and lifeless, but also the most familiar space the destroyer had.

Only he wasn’t there alone.


	2. Reluctant Agreement

****His eyes caught on the only dark patch around, and, with surprising clarity, Error saw his own reflection. Dark bones, red eyes with mismatched eyelights, blue streaks on the cheeks and ever-present glitchy letters, spelling his name. His favorite hoodie, however, was tied around the waist, and his red glasses — which he wore next to never — decorated the bridge of the nose.

There was no end to the glitch’s indignation. He was about to get up and spit out the prepared stack of curses, when he realized he was sitting in something sticky. A single glance downwards — and he instantly leapt to his feet and stumbled away. Turned out Error was standing right in the middle of a formidable puddle of an unknown liquid that smelled of sugar and bubbled here and there. He hesitantly held his hands up, noting how none of his clothes were stained in the slightest — everything slid off him in big droplets and didn’t soak into the clothes, as if they were water-resistant. Though, considering his magic, the destroyer wouldn’t have been surprised if that was true. Not that it was what concerned him at the moment.

“Is that… my soda?!”

He was distracted from a new wave of indignation by the familiar glitchy but clearly happy voice. The destroyer glared at the one responsible for the shameless act of vandalism in his Anti-Void, but the person in question didn’t have the decency to look guilty in the slightest.

“It’s not yours. You stole it from Underfell. Just like the chocolate, by the way. But that means it really is you, huh, Error?”

“Chocolate? Oh no, you didn’t! If you even touched it, you’re so dead!” He gave his own body a fierce glare — though he had a clear guess as to who was standing in front of him. The other shuddered, staring straight into his eyes. Heh, weird. Usually, people looked away when he did that — although… Right, he was in the ink stain’s body, so there was probably some weird symbol showing in his eye-sockets, right? Actually, what did it matter?

He couldn’t see it, but his eyes really did change, showing a red crosshair in one eye-socket and a skull in the other. According to Ink’s — that’s who the other person was — knowledge, those shapes were one of the few “meaningful” symbols, and this exact combination signified an extreme level of rage and usually appeared after drinking red paint. His eyes ran over the vials — all of them were safe, thankfully — and the guardian let out a barely noticeable sigh of relief, watching the other a bit tensely but clearly not taking the threat seriously.

“Try and hold back from killing yourself with my hands. I haven’t touched anything. And sorry for this, really,” he glanced at the cola spilled on the floor. “I simply needed some paint. You obviously don’t own any, so I needed something similar, and — according to the list of contents — this soda has more pigment than water. So now you’re here!”

The artist smiled and, without a second thought, charged at Error for an embrace but flinched back at the very last moment, having barely touched him. He examined the glitches going crazy all over him, looking displeased, and winced at the obvious burning sensation that pierced his body wherever they conglomerated.

“Damn, I keep forgetting about this. And you know, now I get how it is for you. I should write it down on my scarf so I’d never do that again. Some place it would be easy to spot...”

The destroyer flinched back violently, but mostly out of habit, since the fleeting touch didn’t bring any pain, which surprised him yet again — or rather made him happy. Again, he turned towards the spilled soda, and in his mind’s eye he saw himself being dragged into ink, which made him shiver. The memory was sticky and gross, but he figured he got the gist of what’d happened. Error frowned at the guardian.

“How did I get here?”

“Summoning,” Ink replied carelessly, making kneading motions with his hands. The remainders of the glitches still ravaged them, but they were quickly subsiding.

“So what’s happened to me was?...”

“Yep. Teleportation through ink. I don’t know how to create your portals, but I do know that if anyone spills paint and calls my name, I’ll hear them and will be able to teleport, following that call. That’s one of my passive abilities — a very useful one, by the way. You know well just what kind of coordinate problems happen in the Multiverse. I wasn’t sure it would work this time but it did!” He smiled in excitement, but Error didn’t share his good mood. The very thought of going through that again made the glitch shudder.

“Seriously? Has anyone told you that you’ve got the worst mode of travel ever?” he mocked.

“To each their own.” The artist shrugged with a soft smile.

Upon giving him a look-over, the destroyer remembered why he got mad in the first place. He hated when people invaded his personal space — in any meaning of the word — and this crossed the line. He gave Ink another enraged glare.

“Who let you touch my stuff, short stack?” Error crossed his arms and — contradictory to his statement — looked up at the other, which only served to piss him off more. In response the guardian gave his own body a skeptical appraising look.

“The same person who let you touch mine. Just so you know, I never wear my jacket like that.” He pointed at the clothes then carefully touched the red rim of his glasses. “And sorry about the glasses, but I really can’t see a thing without them right now. Though they don’t help much either. Why don’t you ever wear them if your eyesight is this bad? You can’t just ignore it. And, by the by, ‘short stack’? Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m taller than you right now.”

Error’s anger grew with every second and every word, but he tripped on an odd feeling — as if he wanted to get angrier but couldn’t. Looking down at the belt, he swore and reached for the red vial, ignoring the other’s protests. Ink was clearly scared and tried to stop him but jerked back at the onset of glitches that came the moment he touched the hand that was formerly his. Error smiled a little, noting he wasn’t the only one with problems, then — despite Ink’s concerns — only barely licked at the vial’s contents and started his furious rant with renewed vigour.

“Shut up! My eyesight is my business, got it?! If I find out you’ve done something else to my body…”

He didn’t get to fully enjoy threatening the other — Ink’s responding glare was just as intense, forcing him to go silent mid-word. And although the other’s eyes didn’t change, there were definitely more glitches surrounding him now, and his voice started to crack unpleasantly and change in tone.

“At least I didn’t undress you — unlike someone else, I see. There are definitely less clothes on my body than usual. Don’t tell me you’ve…” Blue blush spread over the black cheekbones, and Error almost choked on Ink. He cringed.

“Quit with that bullshit, rainbow freak. I only got rid of the unnecessary junk. And when I say ‘god rid of’, I mean that I only took it off — I didn’t destroy it, unlike what you’ve probably assumed. Your rags are currently lying about in the Doodle Sphere. And if you think that I would stoop to something like _that_ then my opinion of you has just gone even lower — and here I thought it has already hit rock bottom. But I still don’t get why you always wrap up into layers like a cabbage.”

“I, um… So you haven’t seen…” Ink was nervous, throwing glances at the now uncovered neck, where, looking blurry in the unfamiliar eyesight, branched the black lines and curls. Error, however, interpreted the reaction in his own way, holding out an open palm in front of himself.

“Gray bones? Pft, so what? As if that’s worth hiding. Trust me, I don’t give a damn what the colour of your bones is — especially considering how ‘amazing’ my eyesight is. I’m much more concerned about the state they are in, and usually I would prefer if it’s ‘broken’ or ‘ground to dust’. Though you can probably guess why I can’t achieve either of those right now. And you have no idea how much that pisses me off! You owe me an explanation!”

“Then you’ve got the wrong person. I’m just as confused as you are.” The guardian looked down, secretly happy that he’d avoided at least one unpleasant conversation.

Who knew just how curious the glitch was? And he wasn’t ready to talk about some things — at least, not in their current circumstances.

Speaking of circumstances… He looked at the glitch, hopeful.

“Listen, Error, I know we have our differences, but, with our situation in mind…”

“ _Truce?_ ”

The destroyer practically spat out the blasted word, yet he knew well enough that there wasn’t much of a choice. What else could he do? Fight Ink then and there? Yeah, right, that way he’d basically end up injuring his own self and also run the risk of ending up in the body of the rainbow asshole for good. No, thank you. Even though the very idea of temporarily cooperating with the other grated on his soul — which, by the way, he probably didn’t have right now — this way the artist at least would stay out of his way — and he might even end up saying something not completely useless.

Ink froze. He couldn’t believe that the glitch would give up so quickly. The persuasive monologue he’d prepared was cut off at the very first sentence.

“So you… agree?”

“God…” Error rolled his eyes, already regretting this. “But none of your usual junk about being friends! And keep in mind, this only lasts until the moment we find a way to change back. After that’s done, I’ll immediately rip you to pieces.”

“No problem. But you have no idea how glad I am to hear that!” The guardian only smiled a little at first then let out a happy laugh with light metallic undertones to it. His voice barely glitched.

“And keep that expression off your face while you’re in my body! It’s disgusting to look at!”

There really was no end to the artist’s joy, but, most importantly, it was completely sincere and came from his own self! Oh, he would’ve given everything just to make it last forever. After all, it was so much better than using paints.

The paints… He suddenly shuddered and looked at his own body with sudden seriousness, focusing on the red vial still held in the other’s grip. Error clearly knew what he was doing when he grabbed it.

“Have you used my paints? What colours have you drunk? What are you… feeling right now?” Ink asked, agitated, not taking his eyes off the sash.

“Huh? Yeah, red and yellow. Didn’t dare trying the others. Didn’t know what kind of shit’s in them, and I didn’t feel like poisoning myself. Also, I’m no idiot — I’ve found your notes. As to what I’m feeling… Is it really that important?!”

“ _Yes, it is,_ ” the guardian enunciated every single word in a tone that allowed no objections. “In what proportions?”

Error shivered. His own face, while lacking the insane grin, was darker than a storm cloud and almost instilled fear in him, but the strange emptiness once again didn’t let the corresponding reaction to surface. It partially explained why that ball of ink was so fearless and how he managed to grin even when in dire straits. But the glitch suddenly lost any desire to argue — and getting an explanation about what the deal was with the ink stain’s emotions would be useful.

“Argh… I licked the red one three times. Yellow one time. And as for what I’m feeling, I’m beyond pissed, as you must’ve realized by now, unless you’re blind. Though right now, heh, maybe you are! But still I… um… Basically, the situation we’re in isn’t as shitty as it could’ve been. I’m alive and I’ve found you, so that means I’m not doomed to solve this mess alone — and my own body is okay to boot. You could say there are reasons for joy, but there’s nothing good about having to cooperate with you,” he grumbled, looking away.

The owner of the paints gave him a satisfied nod and took the white vial from the improvised belt, doing his best to avoid touching anything but the clothes. He had no desire to experience more of the effects of the newly-acquired glitches, even though he wasn’t scared of touching in general — unlike Error, who tried to back away, but the gravity of the look he got made him concede. Ink clearly understood his stuff better than he did, and arguing about it wasn’t just useless — it was dangerous.

“If you’re getting such a strong reaction from such a small dose, then you’re almost empty. Here, take a sip from the white one. It should erase everything. After that take a sip out of every single one, except for black and pink. Start with yellow — you should drink a bit more of it than others, by the way.”

“Every single one?... But…”

“That’s the required minimum. You… won’t feel all of them at once, no. Rather, it’ll create a palette for you to use. If there’s a little bit of every colour present, they’re in the same proportion and no colour trumps the others, then you’ll just react to things as normal, according to the situation present. Don’t argue.” The artist persistently held the vial out to Error, and after a moment’s hesitation the other nodded with a sour grimace.

“What’s wrong with pink and black?” he asked, suspicious, as he eyed the vial.

Come to think of it, as far as he could remember, Ink not only never drank those two colours, but he never even touched them. Unlike the rest of the palette, those two vials were always full, while the others were always at least a little bit emptied. Usually, yellow was the one that had the least of it left over — a third of the vial tops. It seemed like Ink really drank that one often.

The guardian hesitated at the question and turned away, as if he was asked something really personal, but he still answered in the end.

“That… Black is hatred. And pink is love. Both are very potent, concentrated and quick-acting. Trust me, you _don’t want to know_ what would happen if you mess up their dosages. And drinking a pure colour…” The artist gulped and shivered. His body was blurred with glitches — brought by bad memories, Error guessed. That happened to him as well. “Don’t ask. I almost never use them, and you’d better never touch them at all. _Ever_ ,” he clarified in a low voice, clearly not eager to continue discussing that subject.

“Okay, I get it… What about the others? And why should I drink more yellow? I know that it’s joy, but, if you ask me, now’s not the time to act like a smiley idiot.” The annoyance in the glitch’s voice refused to subside, and, apparently, he was ready to cling to any chance to postpone drinking from the vial.

Ink winced again but nodded, remembering the meanings of the colours. Leaving the destroyer in the dark was a bad idea. He knew from experience what consequences ignorant usage of the paints could bring, and he could do without Error mixing something up. If that happened, he could say goodbye to getting an appropriate response to just about anything.

“Different concentrations have slightly different effects. And the paints also affect each other. But to keep it brief,” he slowly moved his finger over the sash, pausing at each vial, “red is annoyance, anger, fury; it’s possible to drink enough to get blood lust. I guess, you know what it does already, and I hope you’ll be careful with it. I’m serious.

“Orange is a little like yellow, but it’s got a different intent. It’s inspiration, bravery, self-assurance, but if you overdo it, then it can get to recklessness and selfishness.

“Green is responsible for surprise, curiosity, suspicion and disbelief — up to paranoia.

“Cyan is melancholy, sadness, depression and despair.

“Blue, on the other hand, is peace, calmness and serenity, but also apathy. It’s… somewhat similar to white, so I don’t like it much.

“Neither do I like the purple one, but it’s obvious. It lets you feel enmity, disdain, disgust, and in big doses it’s almost hatred — but there are still differences between it and the black one. The black one’s worse.

“Magenta is something between purple and pink. It’s awkwardness, shyness, shame. You can’t feel guilt without it, and that feeling has it’s uses too sometimes.

“And yellow — yes — is joy, happiness, excitement and even euphoria. I use it the most, and, trust me, we could use some optimism right now. Especially considering I can’t control mine while I’m in your body.” Ending the short lecture on that note, he sighed heavily and looked away, his shoulders drooping.

The guardian started shivering again — it seemed like emotions churned in him without any paints, and Error was scared to even imagine what kind of concoction was inside the other. Not that he was very interested in that — much like in understanding colours, but the latter was hard to ignore right now. According to the explanation, each colour — in too big of a dose — was dangerous in one way or another. The notes of the scarf agreed with that claim…

Making a mental note to be more careful after all, the destroyer reluctantly followed the orders and was about to bring the white vial to his mouth when he suddenly realized that the streaks on his own face were way brighter than usual, and the edges were way too jagged. He instantly frowned — _as if there wasn’t enough to deal with already._

“Did you cry while in my body, ink stain?”

Ink flinched and grew embarrassed.

“I…”

“Now it’s your turn to save your objections. Just like you know your vials, I know myself.

“By the way, I’m still waiting on that explanation as to why the hell you even need them. Why can’t I feel like I usually do?”

“Because there’s nothing to feel with. You know what my problem is already.”

“Heh, so you’re not just a soulless bastard — you’re fucking emotionless too, that it?” Error sneered, and the guardian frowned a bit but didn’t react in any other way.

“Insults aside, you’re basically right. You’ll understand once you sip some white. Its effects put me to my baseline state, when all of my emotions are gone. When I don’t drink paints, I’m just… empty. Absolutely empty.”

Error instantly lost any desire to drink the weird liquid, but he wasn’t given a choice.

The moment the paint entered his system, the glitch did understand.  Both anger and joy went out in a heartbeat, and so did all the plans for the future. Why think about it? Okay, he was stuck — so what? Who cared? He didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything, and he was so indifferent to the whole situation that he would’ve sat down right then and there, with zero intention of doing anything else, but a different vial was hastily pushed into his hands.

Error flinched and shook his head. The delusion was gone. He looked at the yellow paint, then at Ink, who was holding his own hand and suffering through the onslaught of glitches. Not hesitating any longer, he took a sip from the vial, then went over the rest of them in order and only then felt more or less okay. The emotions stabilized, and, more than anything, he felt giddy but the echoes of other feelings also made themselves be known. Upon appraising his mental state, the destroyer couldn’t hold back from taking another sip from the red vial.

“It’s not really me, if I can’t get pissed off by anything and everything. For example, by the fact that your way of being normal is the most abnormal and fucked-up of all,” he explained in response to Ink’s worried look. The other watched the red vial with extra apprehension.

“Trust me, I know that better than anyone else,” the artist replied with a lackadaisical nod.

He sighed heavily and turned away. More glitches appeared all around him, and his voice was very obvious about changing in tone, constantly jamming itself. He took off the glasses and rubbed at his eyes, and Error realized that the guardian’s eyesight was covered with errors right now.

For a second he tried to imagine how Ink was feeling at the moment. The inky bastard must’ve been choosing his own colours for his reactions his whole life — yet now he ended up in the body of someone who wasn’t known for his self-control. The crying instantly stopped being a mystery.

The artist suddenly grabbed the yellow vial and hesitantly licked at its contents with one of his tongues, but only cringed and chuckled unhappily.

“Just paint. It doesn’t affect you. It doesn’t affect anyone. I forget about it sometimes.”

Upon returning the vial, he sat down on the floor and hid his face in his hands. His eyesight still refused to return in full, and his body was assaulted with glitches and shudders — though, Error figured, they weren’t strong enough for him to glitch out and reboot. It seemed like Ink had had his fill of crying. And even though the glitch wasn’t worried about his wellbeing — as long as the body didn’t get injured — the guardian wasn’t particularly useful in this state.

“I’d rather you stopped this whining and we started to discuss our plan of action. But, considering what’s going on with you right now… Damn, this sucks, huh? Speaking from experience, you need to calm down and wait it out. How do you usually…?” He wanted to say, _“get your shit together”_ , but remembered just who he was talking to.

He doubted Ink ever had a need for that, since he was only ever sad when he wanted to be.

Error’s eyes went over the paint he’d been perusing just a little earlier, as if the artist’s belongings could help him somehow. But what if they could?

“Hold on. I’ve got an idea.” He pulled the paintbrush from behind his back and roughly pushed it at the guardian.

The other flinched in surprise but, upon seeing Broomy in his arms, hugged it as if it was the closest and most beloved creature in his life — which, actually, wasn’t that far from the truth. Though he also noted that his favorite brush was obviously heavier than he’d expected, so he carefully stood it beside himself. Once the familiar object was by his side, Ink quickly got better. He smiled at the glitch bashfully, not expecting the other to be so caring.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t celebrate too soon, ink stain. Come on.”

The destroyer examined their surroundings, realized which part of the Anti-Void he was in and went off in the direction he needed, ordering Ink to get his ass off the floor and follow him.

He was almost at his destination when he looked back and suddenly realized he’d gotten far ahead, while the owner of the brush was running surprisingly slowly. Actually, thinking back to their fights, the rainbow asshole tended to get more nimble once his favorite paintbrush was taken away or broken — in the latter case he also became angrier. Only now did Error realize just how much he’d underestimated the short stack’s physical strength.

“Dammit… Give me that, or we’ll never get there! It’s not that far though.”

He ripped the bulky weapon out of the other’s hands and dragged the confused guardian with him by the sleeves of the hoodie. Soon, just as expected, among the void, a bit farther from the weavings of strings, he found a big blue beanbag chair. He’d made it himself, by the way.

“Sit down. I usually can’t stand it when people touch my stuff, but I need you to be of sound mind. Not that it’s possible, all things considered. But no matter. I just need you to be able to think.”

Ink hesitantly fell back onto the huge pillow. It softly wrapped around his body, letting him get comfortable and relax. The destroyer gave him his paintbrush back, and he spent a few minutes just hugging it and leveling his breathing, until his body stopped falling apart into pixels more than was strictly necessary and the error signs subsided and stopped flickering here and there. He opened his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief: his eyesight returned to former sharpness — if one could call it that. He was absolutely sure that Error needed a new pair of glasses and instinctively reached for his scarf but stopped midway, looking up at Error.

“You’ve barely calmed down, and you’re already getting handsy?” snorted the glitch, stepping away from the touch.

“Give me my scarf, please. And a pen. I want to make some notes,” asked Ink as calmly as he could, pulling his hand away. “There’s no guarantee my memory is any better just because I’m in your body. Especially considering I don’t remember how I got here.”

“So you’ve got nothing either? Though, knowing you, it’s not surprising.” Error sneered but let him have his stuff and watched the tiny handwriting appear on the scarf. “But while you may be busy scribbling, I’d rather get out of this shitty situation as soon as possible. So, from the top, what do we know about the position we’re in? Apart from shared amnesia?”

Ink nodded in agreement, putting the scarf aside and staring into the void in concentration as he tried to collect his scattered thoughts. Though, to be honest, he had nothing to say. He sighed and shrugged.

“Most likely, nothing in particular. We simply woke up in each other’s dimensions and realized we’ve swapped, right? And not just swapped, but only our minds did. But the state of our bodies — and not just that — remained as is. You lack a soul and I have one. You’re emotionless, and I have glitches. And, moreover, it’s hard to say what’s happened before this. My last memory is quite neutral and blurry. I was at home drawing in my spare time, and nothing indicated the impending doom. And I wasn’t about to fight anyone.”

Error clicked his tongue in annoyance and settled down on the beanbag chair as well, making sure to keep his distance from the other — thankfully, it was big enough for that.

“Just like me. Were you alone?”

“I think so. But the fact that we don’t remember anyone being there doesn’t mean that no one else was involved. I mean, I very much doubt that something like this could happen without any outside influence.  Nothing happens in the Multiverse just because.”

“You’re right.” The glitch nodded, frowning, and hoarsely growled, “And whoever’s behind this, they've signed up to be destroyed ahead of time! But first, it would be nice to get out of here and see what’s going on on the outside. And ask the abominations, who tend to mess with the Multiverse the most, a few questions while we’re at it.”

The guardian smiled, having reached a similar conclusion. It seemed that right now their thoughts matched despite the mess of the situation, which he couldn’t help but be happy about. Since they were rivals — or enemies even, according to Error — they didn’t often get to sit peacefully like this and talk about something other than their fights.

“Yes, they could help. Someone like Sci would surely figure this out,” the artist hummed thoughtfully, going through their options as he checked his scarf for recent entries — but there seemed to be none of those.

“Good idea — especially coming from someone like you. That abomination happens to be surprisingly useful. Really, that’s the only reason his universe still exists.” Error smirked, which earned him an unamused stare.

Still, the guardian held his tongue, aware that now wasn’t the time to start another one of their useless arguments about their stance on AUs. Especially since, in his own way, the destroyer almost admitted that he appreciated that universe and its Sans more than he did others, which he destroyed in bunches without batting an eye — and that was already a big deal.

The scientist really was an interesting character. While Sci knew of the Multiverse, he wasn’t a universe-hopper and almost never left his world. Instead, the Multiverse and its inhabitants came to him, turning his AU — and his lab in particular — into a thoroughfare worse than the Omega Timeline.

He helped the good guys — out of the goodness of his soul — and the bad guys — usually after a couple of nominal threats. Everyone admitted that his services were valuable, and the famous world-destroyer wasn’t an exception.

Sci wasn’t strong and was a very non-confrontational monster, who kept neutrality even in the most violent of arguments, but was willing to do a lot for the sake of continuing his research. And his visitors from other worlds, whether they intended or not, provided him with a lot of valuable data.

Yet no one knew how he used it, since another outstanding quality of his was his limitless discretion. He never gave anyone’s secrets away, even when put through torture. Anyone who tried to get anything out of him was forced to leave disappointed. And while he was stubborn, when it came to using him as a source of information, one could trust him with anything and be sure that no living soul — or even dead or non-existent one — would ever find out about it. And that was yet another bonus in the eyes of anyone seeking his help.

“We could return to the Doodle Sphere then? It would be easier to get to his AU from there.” Ink got up from the beanbag, deciding not to waste any time.

“How?” The glitch’s confused stare was intensified by the question marks in his eyes.

“Well, you’ve managed to teleport here, which means…”

“No,” he cut the guardian off mid-word.

“But…”

“No! I’m not diving into that paint again, get it?! It… it’s as if it becomes one with your body and… No way no how.” Ink flinched, seeing the mismatched eyelights turn bloody-red, but Error wasn’t planning to fight. Instead he stared at the artist demandingly. “Better if you handle it. My portals are much more comfortable.”

“Hmm… I’d love to, but I don’t know how to do it. Your magic doesn’t obey me,” he replied awkwardly then sharply looked up. “No, don’t worry, it’s not gone! I mean, it’s unfamiliar, but I feel all of those strings. There’s… a lot of them. So many. And the moment I close my eyes…”

“It’s as if you can follow any of them with your sight,” the glitch finished for him, nodding thoughtfully. “Yeah, that’s a thing. Like a spider feels everything that touches its web. What’s that name you used for it?... A passive ability.”

“Wow! That’s convenient.” Ink was amazed, smiling despite himself at the realization that, for the first time ever, the destroyer mentioned the principles of how his magic worked. As far as Ink could tell, the other would never have revealed something like that to an enemy, which made the guardian hope that their relationship wasn’t quite so bad. “And… that explains a thing or two. Like how you fight with such…”

“My eyesight is my problem! I’ve told you to drop it!” the glitch snapped, almost jumping up to his feet, but a sharp remark stopped him.

“Right now it’s my problem.” Ink flashed the lenses of his glasses in a show of displeasure, reproachfully looking at the other over the rims.

Everything beyond the limits of the glass looked very washed out and mixed up. Moreover, earlier he’d noticed that the eyes had different kinds of problems: one eye was nearsighted, and the other one was farsighted. And the artist absolutely couldn’t understand how Error — considering his anomalous ailment — managed not only to live but also to fight him as equal, often making the guardian of the AUs break a sweat trying to to stop the too-cocky error.

“Maybe I should draw you a new pair of glasses?” he offered hesitantly.

“And how would that go?” the destroyer cringed, crossing his arms and clacking a finger against bone in annoyance. “You don’t have the power to create right now.”

“But you do!” Ink’s face was graced by an enthusiastic smile. “How about we explain the basics of our magics to each other? Fairing without them would be a problem, don’t you think? Either way, without portals we’re both stuck,” he summed up a bit awkwardly, but that offer made Error jump on the spot, barely keeping the nausea down. He stared at the other as if he’d finally lost is mind.

“You want _me_ to create?! Did being in my body crash the last of your brains, ink stain?!”

“Apart from Broomy, ink is my primary weapon and defense. You should know that,” the guardian remarked, pulling his favorite brush closer. “And I sincerely doubt that you’d be able to wield a paintbrush as well as I do. Your battle style is completely different. So you’ll have to either come to terms with using my magic or leave yourself defenseless. It’s up to you.” He spread his arms wide and shrugged: _it’s all on you, I won’t force you._ Only the way he worded it, it didn’t sound like Error had a choice.

“Your abilities are abysmal. My mission is to erase errors, not multiply them!” the glitch continued to argue, but his voice clearly lacked the passion from before. He knew Ink was right.

“God, you’re fussy… I hope you realize that we’re talking basic safety here? If you refuse to draw, then healing wounds is out of the question too. Just so you know, healing magic doesn’t work on me.”

“Right… No soul means nothing to force magic onto…” He frowned at the guardian, not taking the crosshairs of his eyes off the other.

A bout of tense silence later, Error shuddered and growled through clenched teeth, spitting out every word, “ _This. One. Time. Only._ ”


	3. Magic

**** “Well, I’ll be! I never would’ve thought I’d be teaching you to draw!” There was no end to Ink’s amazement, and he even glitched a little from the overwhelming emotions but paid no mind to it. He pulled a small paintbrush out of the sash and handed it to Error.

“Shut up and quit pointing it out. I resent this enough already. And honestly, I wish I could resent it even more.” The destroyer ripped the tool out of the other’s hand, careful to avoid any touching, and his free hand reached for the purple vial but quickly jerked away. Why purposefully go through negative emotions if he could avoid it? He’d deal without — even though the reasons not to kept piling up.

Error paused, unsure he wanted to say it — or, rather, admit it — but, since safety of his own body was a priority, he sighed and noted:

en

“But you’ll have to learn a thing or two as well then. I’m no fighter without my strings. Though I have blasters too, but… they probably won’t make a good weapon in your hands, since you’ve never used something like that. And don’t forget — the portals are on you. There’s no way I’m diving into paint.”

The guardian nodded, looking just as happy as before, and Error examined the brush he was given with a hint of confusion: it was dry and clean. Ink never carried paints on him — apart from the ones inside his vials, but he never used them for painting. Instead ink just appeared on the tips of his paintbrushes out of nowhere — same with his inky bone attacks — and sometimes Error saw the black sludge pour right out of his hands. And he could easily manipulate all of that paint from a distance, changing its form just by wishing it, so getting any of it on your person spelled trouble. And yet that paint never stuck to the artist himself at all.

Meanwhile, Ink was stuck thinking how to explain what he never could put into words.

“Okay, for starters, my ink and the paint inside the vials are two different things and have different purposes. Don’t mix them up. My paint is created with magic, but as far as I know it has nothing to do with soul energy. It’s not easy to get a feel for but… Try to move the paintbrush through the air and imagine that you’re drawing. Doesn’t matter what it is — it could be a simple line. The important thing is that you feel the magic appear and get used to that feeling, so that you can move on to more complex forms later. By the way, visualizing things helps a lot. You’ve seen my attacks, right?” The instructions were complemented by unsure gesturing whenever he was lost for words, and his voice started glitching once more.

“Quit spelling it out as if I’m a toddler,” snapped the glitch. He really didn’t like the other’s tone. He could do without the baby talk, thank you very much.

“Still can’t get used to you being smaller than me.” Ink tried to use his rival’s usual jest against him, but the other didn’t fail to respond.

“Don’t forget I’m in your body right now, short stack! I see you finally admit it!”

When the “friendly” banter was over with, Error reluctantly gave in and firmly gripped the paintbrush. All in all, it didn’t feel unfamiliar: almost the same as holding knitting needles or bones — and the destroyer knew how to handle both. Before meeting Ink he rarely had any need for the latter, since his strings did the job well enough on their own, but much too often the artist started dragging him into close combat, which was more comfortable for paintbrush-wielding. So, yeah, strings were great, but Error quickly got tired of being rendered helpless the moment the enemy got close, so he had to learn new tricks in haste.

Sighing heavily and still refusing to believe he was doing this, he started to wave the brush around like he was told, not expecting anything in particular to happen. At first, nothing did happen, and that infuriated the destroyer. He was ready to break the poor tool into pieces, but Ink somehow managed to keep him from doing just that.

All that messing with the brush had him so angry he didn’t even notice streaks of ink collect on his fingertips. The magic suddenly took form, and when the glitch tried to clench his fists in a fit of rage, he was surprised to find a sharpened inky bone in his hand. It looked almost identical to the attacks he only recently had access to, though it still had black paint dripping off it.

“Oh! You did it! Not the way I expected, but still… Did you understand how that’s happened?” The artist happily focused his attention on the magic that he used to possess, while Error froze in confusion.

“Not really.” He weighed the bone in his hand and struck at the air a few times. The bone was surprisingly light. “I just felt like kicking your ass in a fight. You and your stupid brushes! Agrh!”

The guardian got lost in thought, apparently not paying any attention to the other’s aggressive tone. When he’d first discovered his magic, he simply wanted to create something so that he wouldn’t be so alone in the white void once the next portion of the Creators’ paint ran out. However it was unlikely that Error ever shared that desire. Yet he was able to create a bone while imagining a fight. How curious.

Ink squinted at the destroyer, having come up with a wild guess.

“The brushes are just a medium. Perhaps you won’t even need them,” he speculated, unsure. “It’s easier for me to form paint with their help, since I associate them with painting and creating objects. What associations do you have? Come on, put your imagination to work.”

“How should I know?” the glitch responded, annoyed. “I’ve told you, creation isn’t my thing!”

“Okay, fine. Baby steps.” Ink let that go easily and pointed to the bone instead. “But can you do that again? Just think the same thoughts.”

“Ha. You want me to think of beating you up? Gladly!” Smirking mockingly, the destroyer pulled out the red vial to intensify his fighting spirit.

He saw the painfully familiar image of a battle in his mind’s eye. The next second a hedgerow of black bones surrounded the glitch, making the artist jerk away. The familiar ink trickled down from the fingers of Error’s outstretched hand, and looking at them gave him an odd idea.

“Hey, your paint can change colour, right?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. It can turn any colour I want,” the guardian replied absentmindedly. His attention was focused on the summoned bones, and he barely looked at the destroyer, only registering his blurry image in the corner of his eye.

“And it can change form as well, right? I do remember you turning it into chains. Strong ones too, dammit.” Error’s grin widened, as he recalled the image he needed and concentrated the magic at the tips of his phalanxes.

“Yeah. I’ve told you already, it is all tied to whatever you imagine.”

“My imagination may be poor, not gonna deny it. But I can still come up with a thing or two!” He swung his hand, but, instead of tearing apart, the streams of ink suddenly turned blue and solidified, flying forward.

With rapt amazement Ink watched the coloured strings connect the phalanxes with one of the freshly-made bones and wrap around it. The only things that set those strings apart from the destroyer’s were their semi-liquid structure and the paint dripping off them. Nonetheless, they were almost as strong, and a sharp pull easily cut the bone into pieces which returned to their original liquid state.

“Ha! That’s more like it!” He made a kneading motion with his hand, letting the improvised strings dissipate. Ink noticed the colourful eyelights change into stars — a sign of excitement, similar to Blueberry’s.

“And you keep saying you have no imagination?” the artist asked, smirking. “I never would have even considered using my paint like that!”

“Don’t you dare underestimate me, rainbow asshole.” The glitch was clearly proud of himself and went on to experiment with inks, having gained some appreciation for them.

The guardian watched him go at it with honest surprise and near-fascination. It was amazing how quickly the glitch had adapted the paint’s peculiarities to fit him! But there was something else inside — some very odd and conflicting feeling that Ink had trouble describing. He was happy to see Error succeed, yet at the same time something kept getting in the way of that happiness — something vague and ambiguous, which made him struggle, stuck in between two opposing emotions. That feeling made him go from one extreme to another, similar to the times he would get a bad blend out of his paint dosage experiments.

That conflict was made worse by the fact that the feeling seemed new — but also familiar. As if he’d never felt it before or, perhaps, he’d been feeling it all along. Considering his poor memory, it was often that he had a déjà vu, and the guardian was almost never sure whether something happened for the first time or he’d been through the experience before. But right now the feeling of déjà vu got was strong as ever.

Then it clicked and his mind came up with the correct word that kept eluding him for the longest time.

Envy.

He was envious. Seeing his own magic — now out of his control — made him wish he could once more feel his paint and create, but the inks didn’t respond to him, and that put a heavy weight onto his newly-acquired soul. Funny, huh? Ink had only ever drunk the colour blend for that emotion once — the time he’d mixed it for the first time — and avoided it ever since, because the feeling rang too strong inside him even in the smallest of doses.

That feeling seemed to haunt him. Even when he didn’t realize it, his lack of soul rang hollow in his chest and forced him to keep searching for something to fill the emptiness with — but the paints were never enough. He wanted the genuine thing. The real deal. Fuck being in control! Ink just wanted to feel things on his own, as if to prove his own existence — something that nobody else ever felt the need to do.

Of course, he never blamed other creatures for having souls when he had none. None of them were to blame. Ink brought it upon himself. Ironically, back then he wanted to be free from emotions — free from the loneliness, the despair, the senseless and useless life, which ended before he was even born, since even his own Creator turned their back on him. The artist didn’t want anyone to share his fate. And the horrifying thing is, he got what he wanted.

He got the power to traverse the Multiverse. He wasn’t alone anymore. He lost his feelings and couldn’t ever fall into despair since. He came to possess the strongest of magics, and this world — these worlds — needed him now, to be their protector and guardian. He came to be capable of helping the Creators, not letting them abandon their creations. Ink became exactly the person he wanted to be — at the low price of his soul. But, as making deals with the Devil goes, he wasn’t spared the consequences.

All of these worlds, all of these colours… They were beautiful, they let him be happy — yet at the same time they served as an eternal reminder of what he’d lost or had never had to begin with. No universe could ever belong to him.  Why could they have it all — yet he could not? Why wasn’t he good enough? Most of them probably didn’t deserve it all anyway… It was unfair, unjust, wrong. And if he’d never be able to obtain a thing, no matter how hard he tried… Then why bother helping them? Wouldn’t it be better for everything to disappear?

Ink believed that that was what had happened to Error — to one more glitch of the Multiverse, who had such a similar yet different fate. The guardian often asked Error what the reason for his hatred was, and always got the same answer: “Because they’re errors, and errors have to be erased.” Yet even if the destroyer truly believed in his mission, somewhere at the edge of subconscious Ink thought — no, hoped with all of his being — that he was right in his assumption. And he wanted to hear it, wanted the proof that he wasn’t the only one thinking it — that he wasn’t alone.

And now his wishes were coming true. He was finally talking to Error in an almost peaceful setting, and — quite unexpectedly — he got a soul, in a weird roundabout way. But there’s always a catch, and this situation was no exception. Real feelings came at a price: they didn’t work like the paints, which could be chosen at will and negated at any moment. Only now did he realize just how hard it was to separate awe from envy — and just how much of the latter he possessed.

The sudden realization had him shivering and glitching a bit. The guardian shook his head and held Broomy closer, trying to pacify the raging emotions. Come to think of it, he’d never really controlled them. Sure, he chose what to feel, but afterwards he let the emotions take over. He’d never tried to suppress them — never saw a need to. So now he was helpless before them.

While the artist was lost in thought, Error had summoned a few more attacks to make sure they were following his command to a T. The attacks didn’t differ much from his former magic. The only thing he had to get used to was the sudden ease and swiftness of motion — which was actually an improvement.

“Your powers suck, short stack, but at least now I probably won’t die in the very first fight I end up in. This’ll do,” he summed up a few minutes later and squinted at Ink with a hint of mirth in his eyes. “It’s your turn now.”

The artist didn’t respond. His body kept flickering, and the amount of error signs around him multiplied again. Upon realizing what was going on, Error came closer but didn’t touch him, knowing that would make things worse.

“Hey, ink stain, do you copy?! Did you freeze again? Weren’t you the one grinning like an idiot just now all because your stupid magic actually worked?”

“Huh? Sorry. I still can’t get used to all of this.” Ink rubbed at his eyes, but, thankfully, they were alright so far. “I’m ready.”

He tried to force out a smile, but it was only half-genuine. Sure, his curiosity was endless — he’d always loved exploring everything new, and he was especially happy to learn something about Error — but the inner turmoil still made itself known. The destroyer tilted his head in thought.

“You’ve cried recently, right? Don’t try to deny it — I know you did.”

Ink shuddered and hurried to turn away. His glitches grew in number, covering his whole body, and more static interfered with his voice. He had trouble talking, but he pulled himself together and nodded, holding his paintbrush closer.

“Yeah, that happened. When I woke up I… got scared. When I’m in my own body, I’m the one in control of my emotions, and I don’t get sad until I drink cyan, but in this case… It’s as if everything went nuts all of a sudden, and I couldn’t do anything about it. My body burned, and… I think I rebooted a few times. And yes, I cried.”

“Great! Now put that empty head of yours to work and remember that feeling. Preferably in detail.”

The guardian looked up at Error in surprise. It’s not like he expected the destroyer to be supportive — especially considering the other had lost any and all sincerity when it came to the corresponding emotions — but the reaction was still way too positive, and that left him baffled.

“I… don’t get it. Why should I?”

“Shut up and do it. You didn’t see me arguing when it came to your damn inks.” The glitch’s expression instantly darkened. “And it’s not my fault that’s the easiest way. You do know how I pull out my strings, right?”

Silently, the artist held up a hand and carefully touched the blue streaks on his skull, running his fingers along them. The strange feeling of magic tickled his cheeks, rubbing off onto his phalanxes. He thought he understood now. Only the truth was as hard to believe in as believing in them switching bodies was. Ink stared at the destroyer, even more surprised now, and felt an echo of sympathy at the edge of his consciousness. His own worries instantly faded into the background.

“I… I’ve never thought your magic, at its core, was… this,” he mumbled, shocked. His voice switched its tone a few times.

“What of it? My strings bring suffering. Why are you so surprised they consist of it as well?” Error shrugged as if that was the most natural thing in the world. “I’m not good at explaining. In short, just focus on your inner negativity — I assure you, there should be enough of it right now — and then touch the streaks and bring your hand towards yourself, as if pulling them out. Once you get used to it, the emotions won’t matter that much, but right now it’s the easiest way.”

“You realized I was crying because of the streaks?” Ink asked a tad bashfully, looking down again and following the instructions. Creating the strings turned out to be easy, but he had no luck holding onto them so far: they ripped the moment he pulled his hand away.

“Yeah, they’re all but shining right now. I don’t remember last time I saw them this bright, which means you’re a hell of a whiner.” The glitch smirked, watching the other’s attempts.

“I’d blame it on the surprise of it all.” The guardian sighed. “I’ve never had a real soul or real emotions that could’ve prepared me for any of this. And I’ve never used cyan much before. But now… Now I know nothing about myself anymore.” He looked down and clenched his hand, not noticing that the magic didn’t dissipate this time. The strings tightened, wrapped around his fingertips and hung loose in wait.

“Yeah, congratulations. But do me a favor and don’t start the waterworks in my body again — especially not in front of others. If I ever find out anyone else saw it, both you and the witness will be begging for a swift death.” The destroyer grew serious again, glaring at the other in warning.

The threat was a compelling one. Ink had never known his stare could be so creepy, so he hurried to nod, not eager to show that side of himself to anyone either. He only drank cyan in abundance alone, in the safety of his home — or, sometimes, in Dream’s company when he needed to get things off his chest. And he absolutely wasn’t about to ruin Error’s reputation now that they’d just started to get along.

But his attention quickly shifted to the magical strings. They were thin yet surprisingly strong and, on top of that, soft. Sadly, it wasn’t really possible to appreciate them when they were squeezing your body, threatening to tear it into pieces — but now he saw them in a different light.

“How do you control them?” Ink asked, playing with the strings in his hands with childlike curiosity, and the glitch considered the question.

“How… That’s a toughie. It’s somewhat of an instinct, like controlling your own body. You just give them a mental order, and they move the way you need. You do feel them, right?”

“Yes, I think, I get it…”

The artist threw his head back and concentrated on the puppet that was hanging almost right above them, wrapped in a few of those same strings. He reached out with his hand, followed the string he needed with his mind. A second later the string slackened, letting the puppet freefall. Ink easily caught it and carefully examined it, noticing that its fabric was made out of those same strings, so, in theory, he should have been able to control them as well. He was hit by an idea — did that mean that he could make the puppet move? — but those thoughts were interrupted by Error’s rage-filled yell.

“I thought I’ve told you not to touch my shit! Put that back, now!”

“S-sorry.” Ink looked at the strings in his hand and, attempting to repeat the trick, wrapped them around the toy, sending it back up. The strings tore away from his hand and intertwined with the ones that were already on the ceiling, making the web denser. “I think, I’ve figured it out,” he said, trying to sound as peaceable as possible, but stepped away, holding his hands up in a pacifying gesture just in case. “Though I’m not sure yet that I’d be able to use them in battle.”

“You’d better do your best. I doubt I need to explain what would happen to you should you injure my body.” It looked as if — in Error’s case — the ever-changing eyelights decided to stick to the shapes of a crosshair and a skull forever. “But portals are much more important right now. Do you understand code at all?” Error calmed down a bit and gave the artist a skeptical look. As was to be expected, the other shook his head.

“I don’t think so. But if you’re referring to the weird text lines floating in space, then yes, I see them. If I look at one spot for too long, all of this whiteness seems to… fall apart into symbols. It hurts my eyes a bit.”

“Oh, that means we can skip that part of the explanation.” The glitch seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, not eager to delve deep into that subject matter. “I perceive everything as code. I can see it in everything around me: in objects, in living beings, in the very fabric of a world. And to open a portal you need to make a hole in that code.”

“How?”

“Think of the name of the universe you need and find it among the text. And then…” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “Well, simply put, you need to reach in-between those text lines. That would create a gap.

“By the way, windows and portals are a bit different. You can’t go through the former, but they can show you the past — like a video archive. It would do us good to check it out… But that can wait.”

“Even if I get what you’re saying — which I highly doubt…” Ink took off the glasses and gave it some thought, running his eyes over the flickering lines, which started to gain clarity. “What’s the address of the Doodle Sphere?”

“That I do not know.” Error clicked his tongue in annoyance. His expression instantly darkened for some reason. “Your space is hidden from me, remember? I would’ve been glad to find it and break in — and do the same to the Omega Timeline — but both of you are too good at hiding, you bastards.”

The guardian sighed and found himself thinking, that if he discovered the coordinates he needed, he wasn’t going to give them to the destroyer. But so far he’d seen nothing that looked like his residence’s code.

A few minutes of searching later he was no longer surprised that the glitch had such poor eyesight: The font was tiny. There was almost no space between the lines, which turned them into a solid wall of text, which forced him to look closely at it. To top it off, the words sometimes glitched back and forth — almost enough to cause a seizure. Anyone would go blind faced with that.

In the end, an indeterminable amount of time later, when his head was starting to hurt, Ink came across a familiar word. He shuddered from sheer nervousness. The painful memories made a wave of glitches wash over him — which Error didn’t fail to notice.

“Have you found it yet?” the destroyer asked impatiently. He was already sick of standing there doing nothing but watching the artist squint into space, so he passed the time practicing the unfamiliar magic.

“I don’t know yet,” the other responded in a shaky voice. “But…” he gulped and hesitantly reached for the text line.

Before him, white letters shivering, shone the word “Void”.


	4. Old Questions

****The space split, opening up into Error’s familiar rift in space with its glitchy edges. On the other side of the portal spread the golden light that both of them found familiar, and it contrasted sharply with the whiteness of the Anti-Void. The destroyer quickly crossed to the other side, but Ink hesitated, assessing the experience. It definitely felt different from travelling through paint, but he thought he understood the principle behind it and hoped he’d be able to open a portal quicker next time.

The lines of code hurt his eyes, but, while looking through them, the artist had figured out where the other universes he knew were. Now it was just a matter of keeping the coordinates from slipping from the short memory of his, but, thankfully, his forgetfulness hadn’t been making itself known so far. He itched to write down some notes on his scarf just in case, but the item in question was still in Error’s possession, and the artist had a suspicion that it would have to stay there, which left him without his portable notepad. And writing on the glitch’s clothes was a very bad — and near-suicidal — idea. Besides, the type of fabric and its black colour weren’t very suitable for that purpose anyway. He’d have to find a replacement…

While he pondered that, the destroyer examined the rift with a hint of curiosity.

“Looks like you’ve actually done it, ink stain — even though you’ve wasted so much time on it.” He thought for a moment then, upon coming to an odd realization, looked at the guardian. “Hey, wasn’t there supposed to be a block on this place?”

“There was and there is.” Ink finally stepped through the glitching portal, closed it with a tentative gesture, put on the glasses again and sighed in relief when the symbols disappeared, leaving only the usual slightly blurry image behind. “There are many ways to get into a blocked-off space, but the easiest one is when you know the ‘key’. And, naturally, I know mine.”

“How do you even manage to remember it, hm?” The glitch smirked mockingly.

The  guardian’s memory was one of the subjects for endless quips, especially since Ink regularly forgot half the insults spoken and always reacted with outrage, as if he was hearing them for the first time. But right now the artist only cringed a little, much more focused on searching for Timetale AU among the pages.

“This is my own dimension. It’s impossible for me to forget its ‘key’. Now, other universes’ blocks can be a problem… so I have to rely on Dream for those,” he admitted a little shyly.

“Why am I not surprised…” Error snorted and leisurely headed deeper into the space of the Doodle Sphere, soon coming across the place where he’d awoken. “And just how many people have the keys to the very center of the Multiverse?” he wondered without any particular enthusiasm, examining the mess.

Come to think of it, Ink wasn’t the only one who’d messed up the other’s abode. The inky puddle — which the destroyer still chose to keep his distance from — stood out clearly amidst all the yellow, and the scattered clothes lay not far from it. He glanced at the pile of useless cloths and only now noticed a small notebook among them. How had he even missed something like that? Though, to be fair, back then he had been preoccupied with other thoughts. The notebook was mostly filled with quick sketches, and, as he was carelessly leafing through it, Error was surprised to see a few doodles depicting him. The glitch almost choked upon making this discovery.

Fighting down the shock and the desire to tear the paper to shreds, he gave the guardian a dubious look. The drawings were… finely made. But why would the rainbow asshole even draw him? Well, he’d figure it out eventually, but for now the notebook was appropriated and hidden away before Ink could suspect a thing. This body was his anyway, so he could always use that as an excuse as to why he would possess the item.

“I’m not at the center,” the artist responded absent-mindedly — almost mechanically — as his gaze wandered over the pages, that all looked alike.

He could usually find any AU he needed with his eyes closed, yet, after he’d lost the connection with his dimension, things got way more complicated — and that’s not taking his suddenly worsened eyesight into consideration. Yes, Error had figured out how his attacks worked, but he still couldn’t draw objects into being, so getting a new pair of glasses was just a pipe dream.

“The center is comprised of the original Undertale, Dreamtale and Reapertale. And our dimensions aren’t AUs at all and exist beyond the limits of the Multiverse. Their position relative to the other worlds is a mystery. But you know that already. And, to answer your question, Dream, Blue and Core Frisk have the access.”

“That’s all? Aren’t you friends with the whole Multiverse?” The destroyer came closer and smirked a little. It seemed like the guardian hadn’t noticed him messing with the notebook. Good.

“If I choose to invite someone over, that’s one thing — and I can bring them here myself. But giving someone the ‘key’ means they’d be able to come at any time and do whatever they want. And you do realize that, considering this place has direct access to all the AUs, I can only entrust the closest and most trustworthy people with it. Though… sometimes Fresh and Reaper come for a visit as well, but not through the front door — they tear through the space itself in spite of the lock. How do they even have the power to do that?...”

Ink frowned. His voice glitched and rippled at the mention of the controversial duo, but he easily got distracted once he’d finally found the universe he was looking for. Experimentally, he created a few strings and carefully pulled the page he needed towards himself but immediately desummoned them, wary of harming the world.

“Oh, yeah, those two are infuriating. They come into my Anti-Void as if they own the place. I should’ve erased them already…” the glitch agreed, looking down at the vials.

For a brief moment the idea of sipping on purple to show the full extent of his disgust seemed like a good idea, but he decided that those two weren’t worth it. However, the moment he discarded that thought a different one took its place — it wasn’t the first time he’d caught himself thinking like that. It seemed that soon he’d get into the habit of turning to the the contents of the sash. Damn that artist! They’d better sort this out soon…

“So, we’re going to Sci’s? And, by the way, I hope you’re smart enough to understand that I have no desire to go blabbering about our state to just anyone?”

“Hm, yeah, sure. I assume, when we interrogate the others, we’d have to…”

“Oh, no. No, don’t even think about it… Dammit, anything but that…” Error stumbled away, trying to hold back from vomiting once again — and failed to do so this time.

He frowned at the guardian, wiping ink from his face — which did nothing to the deeply etched patch on his right cheek — and it flowed off the clothes on its own, not leaving any stains.

“You have any better ideas?” Ink asked, quirking his eyebrow, not put off by what’d transpired in the slightest. He was used to it. “We’ll have to interrogate Dream and Blue at some point. If anything weird happens in the Multiverse, they’d be the first to go investigate — if you don’t count me that is.”

“There’s no way I’m paying those idiots a visit! Besides, I wouldn’t be able to pass myself for you!” the destroyer exploded, glaring holes into the way too calm artist.

“I could try doing that myself, but I’m not sure Dream would want to talk to… well, technically you. And I have no idea how Blue would react to you, considering…”

“No! Blue can’t see you! Not looking like me! Stay away from him, got it?!” Error’s mood changed in a heartbeat: anger seemed to vanish instantly, replaced with worry. His eyelights flickered, switching, which had the guardian confused.

“Um… Error? Is everything okay?”

“Taking our position into consideration? Got any more stupid questions?” He realized his slip-up too late and was now trying to calm down and cover up his blunder, but the damage was done.

“You know damn well I wasn’t talking about that.” It was now Ink’s turn to glare holes into the other.

Even the glitches around him seemed to dissipate, and his voice turned surprisingly clear, instantly losing any and all interference it was experiencing — yet it only sounded creepier as a result. An oppressive silence surrounded them, and if time existed in this place, the destroyer would’ve sworn it had stopped. Luckily, the emptiness inside him didn’t let him lose his head and panic. Sadly, he must’ve had too much red paint, because keeping it together was hard. He needed to change the subject, fast — but how?...

Ink was the one to break the silence.

“Error… What happened while Blue was your prisoner? And don’t you dare say ‘nothing’. We both know that isn’t true.”

“It’s none of your business!” the glitch snapped, still hoping to find a way out of this predicament. “He wouldn’t know anything that could help us anyway.”

“He’s my friend, and I care about his wellbeing. So it _is_ my business. And how do you know what he would or wouldn’t know?”

The destroyer froze. That was a dangerous question, and — whether he answered it or not — he’d be adding to the other’s suspicion. As they say, “if you want to lie well, tell the truth” — only he had no idea which part of the truth was safe to tell. Welp, he’d have to risk it. Not like he had any chance of getting out of it now anyway. Sighing deeply, he tried to force out a smirk.

“We’re talking about Blue after all. Don’t pretend you take him seriously. Or do you really think he’s complicit in something sinister?”

The guardian’s expression grew darker: he didn’t miss how tense Error got at the latest question. Also, the glitch couldn’t see it, but his eyelights betrayed him, turning into an hourglass and a spiral, which meant he was perplexed and pondering something. Ink was sure now that things weren’t quite so simple here.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” The destroyer did his best to remain calm, but that didn’t quite work out for him. His eyes darted towards the sash a few times — dammit, which one was responsible for staying calm?! Why did his memory have to fail him _now_? He _really_ didn’t want to drink white. “Blueberry’s fine. He returned to you, and I’m not about to kidnap him again. What more could you possibly want?”

“I want answers.”

The artist sighed and broke the eye contact, looking away, and, ironically, the page corresponding to Underswap caught his eye. His memories corresponding to that event were hazy and kept slipping away from him, but he still had some of them left. He squinted at Error again and went on, crossing his arms and shaking with glitches.

“Blue never spoke of what’d transpired. He simply returned, as happy and carefree as ever. I thought it was fine, since there are things one simply doesn’t want to remember. Even I get it.” The glitch couldn’t hold back a laugh at that, but bit back a quip when Ink switched back to his serious-slash-suspicious tone. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was him avoiding you, but what I didn’t expect is for _you_ to avoid _him_. So… Are you scared of him, that it?”

He refused to take his expectant gaze — which held a mixture of subtle worry, more prominent confusion and overwhelming curiosity — off the destroyer. The other was briefly dumbstruck by what he’d heard, then, once he’d fully processed what had been said, he let out a shaky laugh. Still, the strange nervousness was in no hurry to leave his voice.

“Do you even listen to yourself? Me? Scared of Blueberry? Are you serious right now?” he responded with an odd smile, unable to convey just how bonkers the suggestion was. Luckily, the glitch had no problem giving Ink the “are you an idiot” look regardless of his mental state. “He’s the youngest Sans in the Multiverse — Littletale excluded! Oooh, scary.”

“Maybe so, but his brother is strong,” the guardian reminded.

“Ha! Clearly not strong enough, if he couldn’t do a thing once I had Berry! And I razed all of Underswap to the ground too!” Error stated smugly, and his smile slowly morphed into his usual predatory grin.

“Uh-huh. Only you’ve stopped attacking it,” Ink hummed, estimating time, “right after the kidnapping. I could be missing some details, but I don’t think I’ve seen you come anywhere near it since then. You don’t usually give up so easily.”

The destroyer gave a barely noticeable flinch, but did nothing else to give himself away. He went on speaking in that cocky tone and with that usual attitude of his:

“The worlds are many, and there’s only one of me! I would’ve destroyed everything at once if I wanted to — but you keep getting in the way, rainbow asshole! But I’ll destroy it too, only…”

“ _‘Only later’?_ ”

It got dead silent then. The glitch instantly went quiet, realizing just how big of a mistake he’d just made. He couldn’t force a single word out, staring at a single point in space. The guardian gave him a weak smirk.

“Funny how I remember that. Despite the lack of notes, that meeting of ours in Outertale is still surprisingly fresh in my mind — and you know how bad my memory is. That was the first time you’ve uttered those words. That was the first time you’ve come to a universe not intending to destroy it. That was incredible!” He gave the pages surrounding them a look of awe and a warm smile. “And you’ve only ever said it about three universes — I have them all written down. Outertale, Undernovela and Timetale. You like the former two, and the third one’s more of a useful one, since it has Sci. Oh, and we’ve never talked about it, but you sometimes visit Chocotale to destroy it in a pretty unorthodox way. And now there’s Underswap? Has that world come to matter to you in some way as well? And if it’s not fear, then what is it? Or maybe… you blame yourself for what you’ve done to Blue?”

That’s when Error couldn’t take it anymore. He clenched his fists, digging fingertips into his palms, and glared at the artist with the crosshair eyelights — which became an all too common sight during their short time spent together — only this time he looked way more infuriated than before. Fighting down haphephobia, he lunged forward and grabbed Ink by the collar of the red t-shirt, taking the other by surprise. The physical strength the other’s body granted him let itself be known and, despite being short, he managed to lift the other into the air.

“Quit spewing bullshit! I have nothing to blame myself for! Considering what’s happened, he should be thanking me!”

“And what’s happened?” Ink picked up on the wording. He was surprised and wincing at the burn of the glitches on his ribs —  which spread around the hand that was holding him — but kept staring intensely at the other. “You do understand that now is not the time to be keeping secrets?”

He wasn’t about to remain hanging in the other’s grasp and was ready to twist out of it and push the destroyer away, but the glitch, having realized what he’d just said and done, uncurled his fingers and stumbled away, which left the artist falling to the ground next to him. Even though his hand didn’t hurt, Error held it close out of habit and turned away.

“He has nothing to do with the position we’re in. That’s it.”

“Error, seriously, what’s the problem?!” The guardian was losing both his patience and his self-control. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

“Because I’ve promised Blue, you idiot!” His scream echoed throughout the whole Doodle Sphere, and it felt as if it could be heard even in the AUs that surrounded them. The glitch instantly cut himself off, covering his mouth.

“W-what?” was the only thing Ink managed to utter, looking at the other in shock. The glitches intensified, his eyes got covered in text lines, and the space around him crackled, signifying a crash.

“I… I shouldn’t have said that.” Cursing everything and everyone, the destroyer ran his hand over the vials and took out the last one, sipping at the white paint to numb his feelings so that he wouldn’t end up blurting out something else. Why did everything have to turn out this way?! He took a deep breath, feeling the overwhelming emptiness once again, but didn’t give into it this time.

A few minutes later the loading bar above the artist’s head filled up, and he came to, looking around in confusion.

“What happe…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

The guardian blinked a couple of times, then remembered what the glitch had said before. He jerked to his feet.

“No, it does matter! What promise were you talking about?”

“Haven’t I made myself clear?” Error responded, apathetic, as he slowly turned around. “I’m warning you Ink. **_Stay out of it._** ”

The other froze in fear. He knew what he looked like when off his paints, but it was the first time he saw _this_ expression of his with his own eyes. The dark pits of the eye-sockets looked like black holes, pulling everything in. The mouth was creased in a semblance of a smile that looked more like a nightmarish grin. Ink trickled from both the eyes and the mouth and down the cheeks and chin, slowly dripping onto the clothes. It was somewhat reminiscent of Chara’s scary face, but that one paled in comparison to this monstrosity.

The atmosphere instantly grew heavy, weighing Ink down, and felt dreary and dark despite the golden light surrounding them. Ink could barely breathe, and he was forced to step away, feeling glitches run over his body in shudders. A little more of this — and he’d crash again.

He barely had it in him to nod — and only then did Error go through the paints again, barely sipping red but drinking more of yellow to somewhat come to terms with the upcoming meeting. A short while later, as soon as the emotions came into effect again, he turned and walked up to the artist, looking at the other as if nothing had happened.

“Fine. I’ll pay them a visit myself and ask them whatever’s necessary. Blue won’t be a problem. And he won’t be harmed. That I can guarantee. I’m much more concerned about Dream and his sensitivity to just about everything.” The destroyer was finally able to steer the conversation towards a different topic and was now speaking clearly and confidently to show that the previous subject was done with.

“Oh… Don’t worry about it. He wouldn’t notice the change in emotions, since, well.. I don’t have any,” was Ink’s slightly muddled reply, as he was still trying to get his bearings.

“So, he doesn’t sense your paints?” the glitch clarified, a bit surprised.

“No. Or he does, but not the same way he does emotions. At least, he definitely feels they’re fake, and we’ve known each other long enough, so he probably won’t pay attention to small inconsistencies in behavior. Some of my experiments with paints had… a variety of consequences… He’d seen some shit.” The guardian hesitated with his word choice and noted that this was probably the most innocent description for what was happening to him in those moments. If Dream wasn’t by his side back then… He gulped. Better not to think of it. “Also, don’t forget how my memory is. If he asks any leading questions, tell him, ‘I don’t remember,’ and the problem is solved. He wouldn’t bat an eye. Basically, you don’t need to be the actress of the year to ask him a few questions without giving yourself away.”

“Great. That’s one less thing to worry about.” Error smiled lopsidedly, though he didn’t look particularly happy about it.

Just like Ink, the keeper of dreams belonged to the kind of people who see good in everyone, and he tried to talk Error out of destroying along with the ink stain. However, he was a bit smarter than the rainbow asshole and stayed much more careful and vigilant around the glitch. Error himself preferred to avoid him as well, leaving him for Nightmare to deal with.

And that was because — unlike Ink, who only annoyed him with friendship propositions — the artist’s sunny friend could feel auras and never passed up an opportunity to turn a fight into a semblance of a therapy session, reading Error’s emotions without permission. And even though the things he said sometimes turned out to be useful, it was still a gross intrusion into Error’s personal space and an almost direct violation of his soul, which wasn’t something the destroyer could ever forgive.

So he wasn’t exactly happy to cross paths with Dream on purpose, and the yellow paint wasn’t helping much. He could only hope that what Ink’d said was true and Dream wouldn’t suspect a thing, even though he had a hard time believing it.

Meanwhile the artist calmed down somewhat, even though his soul was still beating hard inside his ribcage, which was as unfamiliar a sensation as his sudden negative reaction was. But it was hard to fight it, so he chose to temporarily put off asking the intriguing questions and focus on what was important then and there. Sighing deeply once more and pushing his worrying down, the guardian looked over the AUs in thought and tried to remember what other people he knew of, who didn’t stick around in their own worlds.

“Hm. Whom should I ask? Sorry, but I don’t think a lot of people would want to talk to you,” he hummed, doubtful, and hurried to add, “No offence.”

Ink looked away: he kept thinking of his own horrid face, and making the destroyer even angrier wasn’t a part of the plan. He knew too well just what he was capable of in that state and, honestly, didn’t want to experience it firsthand. Error, however, wasn’t put off in the slightest — on the contrary, he smiled smugly as if Ink had paid him a compliment.

“Ha. That’s what you’re worried about? You currently possess the reputation of the most powerful destroyer in the Multiverse. Never mind that you’re not familiar with using strings yet — it’s enough to simply show them for most people to tell you their whole life story just for a chance to get out alive. So, whether they want to talk to ‘me’ or not, we’ve got more pressing matters right now.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Okay, then…” A black page, that stuck out among the overwhelming yellow, caught his eye. “Perhaps I could use this situation to interrogate the nightmares.”

“What, you wanna spy on them?” The glitch squinted slyly. He didn’t expect the benign guardian to do something like that. Ink, however, didn’t share the sentiment, shrugging.

“And why not? Why waste such a chance? It’s always good to know what they’re planning.” He frowned a bit, remembering something. “But what about Nightmare? Just like Dream, he’s able to…”

“He couldn’t care less about the emotions of his subordinates, and I also happen to be an unspoken member of the team. I come when I want and help only either for my personal benefit or out of boredom. Night has never been a boss of me, and he knows it, just like he knows about my many hang-ups and insanities.” Error waved him off, seemingly unconcerned about it. “So, as long as you don’t act as if you’re high on yellow paint or you’ve suddenly learned some manners, he’ll believe you. And even if he won’t, he’ll keep it to himself. He doesn’t want me to become his enemy, that’s for sure. And if he gets too cocky, you can mention how you could erase the most negative of worlds — the ones that give him the most power — out of turn. Trust me, he’ll keep his mouth shut even if he’d have to choke on his own tentacles.”

Ink tried to imagine that and smiled despite himself. Nightmare was known as a very prideful dictator, who didn’t tolerate insubordination. His orders weren’t to be questioned, and betraying Nightmare meant signing up for a fate worse than death. Besides, being a keeper of negative emotions, he was free from them himself and was never scared of anything. Yet even he realized his position before the destroyer of the worlds and chose not to provoke the other if he could avoid it.

They used to be enemies, since Nightmare needed the negative energy of the worlds — the very worlds Error destroyed. But when the drawn-out battling got them nowhere, they both admitted that fighting on two fronts wasn’t doing them any good and called a semblance of a truce. Mostly, it was just them coming to terms with each other’s existence and ignoring each other’s actions. After that they focused on their common enemy — the Star Sanses — even though back then the team didn’t yet exist, and it was just the duo of Ink and Dream — and both had a personal score to settle with them.

“Okay.” The artist nodded, content. “One more question. If we’re going to different places, then how do we keep in touch? I can call you through paint, but how do you keep in contact with me?”

“Through actual contact. Create a string and give it to me. Should I need you, I’ll pull on it. If it’s urgent, I’ll rip it. You’ll feel it. And yeah, you’ll be easily able to find it — it’s the same coordinates again,” the glitch replied after a moment’s hesitation. He didn’t want to reveal that — and he was sure he’d come to regret it in the future — but here and now it was the least of their troubles.

“Wow! It’s awesome! Why haven’t you told me this before?” Ink asked, curious, as he pulled out a short string. Error gave him an odd look, turned away, tying the string somewhere under his clothes, and barely audibly answered — mostly for his own benefit then for anyone else’s.

“You’ve never been on the list of people I allow to call me.”

“There’s a list?” The artist quirked a brow in surprise, simultaneously pulling a bottle of ink out of the sash and hiding it inside a pocket of the black and blue hoodie. That’s where he also suddenly found a phone — which was swiftly confiscated by the destroyer.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he said gloomily, touching a page and disappearing into the resulting portal. “And you better pray you would never come to find out.”


	5. Where Do We Start?

****The laboratory greeted the guests with dimness and emptiness, yet not with silence. All of the walls were occupied with tightly packed variety of equipment and machines of unknown purpose. On top of that, at least half of them clearly didn’t fit in this universe. The equipment hummed; colourful light bulbs flickered here and there; pipes and wires alike stuck out of the walls, criss-crossing over each other — and all of that was illuminated by the multitude of bluish screens filled with odd calculations.

Yet, despite the variety, there wasn’t a single common clock in sight, so the guests couldn’t tell what time it was. Actually, it was hard to tell whether it was day or night in almost every version of the Underground — and it was even harder to do so in the lab that was fully isolated even from the inhabitants of this world. This part of the building was hidden from outsiders, situated in a special place where the boundaries between dimensions were loose, making passage easier, so most visitors opened their portals here, which left the regular life of the universe itself unaffected.

Besides, Sci — despite being a devoted scientist — was still a Sans and really liked to sleep but kept cancelling out that bad habit with another one, drinking coffee in liters with the very same passion that the original Sans had for ketchup. Which is why his circadian rhythm wasn’t just off — it was dusted and blown into the wind — so the visitors were about equally likely to catch him working in some far off corner of the lab or sleeping in front of a computer.

Upon looking around and getting used to the semi-darkness after the brightness of the Doodle Sphere, Ink was the first one to speak.

“Sci? You there?”

“Of course he’s here, so quiet down, you idiot. Have you ever seen him outside this lab?” The glitch shut him down and headed deeper into the room, walking out into a bigger chamber next to it.

There, in front of a few glowing screens, stood a skeleton, sporting a ratty green sweater and a white lab coat with traces of old coffee spills and reagent burns — and it was hard to tell one from the other at first glance. He also wore glasses with thin metal rims, and the image of the scientist was completed by the dark shadows under his eye-sockets, which he had lost any hope of ever getting rid of. He wasn’t going to rest as much as his body required anyway, since he considered it a waste of time that could be better used for research.

Strangely enough, his awareness of resets hadn’t made him into a lazybones — unlike what happened with most Sanses. Though the frequent help requests he got played a part in that too — at times they left the scientist with not a single moment of rest. Portals opened up in his lab so often that Sci actually learned to feel the tears in space with his magic, so normally it was impossible to catch him unawares. Even now he instantly got up and turned to face his visitors.

“What can I hel… Whoa. Um… To what do I owe the pleasure?” He straightened his glasses, froze for a moment in his confusion but quickly got his bearings back. “Sorry, I didn’t expect to see you both… at the same time.”

Sci had seen a lot in his lifetime — more than one of those, actually — and had long since stopped being surprised by the looks of the people who visited him. The visitors ranged from the kindest of souls to the worst of the scum. But for people from opposing sides to come simultaneously? Sure, sometimes people brought their enemies — unconscious or dragged in by force — and, usually, asked Sci to heal someone — but _this_ kind of visit happened for the first time.

Anyone, who knew anything about the Multiverse, knew of the unending enmity between these two, so the very fact, that Ink and Error had been standing there for a couple of minutes, yet his lab was still in one piece and not turned into a battlefield, was astonishing. Moreover, upon taking a closer look, he soon realized they were dressed somewhat unusually. That, and the giant paintbrush was in the destroyer’s hands.

“I’ve told you this would add to our troubles,” sighed the owner of the blue jacket and frowned at Sci. “But as far as I know, you can keep your mouth shut, and that’s what matters right now. Are you here alone, scientist?”

“Y-yeah. No one has visited in a few days.”

“Great. Now you’ve got him confused,” the second skeleton replied in a glitchy voice, moved the brush to ensure it wasn’t pointing at the scientist and tried to give Sci the friendliest look he could manage. “Sorry, Sci, but we have a problem. One which should better stay under wraps for now. Have you ever come across cases of minds swapping?”

The scientist looked from the guardian to the destroyer and back in shock. Something clicked, and he shuddered in realization.

“You’ve…?”

“Yep, imagine that,” annoyed, the glitch cut him off, not wishing to hear a reminder of how awful everything was. He hastily walked up to Sci and looked straight into his eyes with his mismatched eyelights. “Now, from the top. One: Not a word to anyone. Two: The sooner things get back to normal, the less angry I would be once it’s all over. I hope I don’t need to explain what it means? You’re supposed to be the smart one — or we wouldn’t have come to you.”

“Error, enough!” The artist quickly squeezed himself in between them and pushed the destroyer away with his brush. Then he forced a smile onto his face and looked at the confused scientist. “Please. You know I’ll find a way to repay you.”

“Ha, and you already know what kind of gratitude you get from me: your world gets to live a bit longer,” Error piped up with a smirk, earning himself one more angry glare. Meanwhile Sci stepped away to his computer and started quickly tapping the keys.

“I… Of course, I’ll do whatever I can but… To be honest, I’ve never seen anything like that before. Unless you count the cases where Chara and Frisk are able to inhabit each other’s bodies, or when a monster absorbs a human soul. But a complete exchange? Perhaps, it’s made possible somewhere in the Multiverse, but I’ve never had a chance to study anything like this. Besides, sure, the peculiarities of the particular universe might allow it, but you’re both… Although, that could be what’s caused this? How did any of this happen?” The fleeting confusion on the scientist’s face soon was replaced with undeniable curiosity and scientific interest. He turned around and now looked at his visitors like an explorer, who’d just discovered a rare exotic species.

The destroyer shivered under that gaze and chose to turn away. The list of things, that he’d had to put up with in a short timespan, was growing exponentially, but he couldn’t afford to snap again. Besides, Sci had always been that way. Perhaps, a passion for knowledge so strong, that one could sacrifice ethics, was a distinguishing trait of any scientist. At least, Error had seen enough universes to know that every one of them had at least a few amalgamates in their closet.

“If we knew, we wouldn’t be here,” he remarked snidely.

“Perhaps we do know, but we don’t remember for sure,” Ink attempted to defuse the situation.

“Amnesia?” Sci inquired, all business, as he once again turned to face the screen filled with notes, that kept flickering so fast it was a wonder he managed to make anything out.

“Or the effects of his memory, which is as short as he is.” The glitch refused to let it go. The artist only rolled his eyes and chose to focus on more essential things.

“Yes, we can’t remember anything beyond us both resting at home. And, by the by, I know you don’t leave this place, but do you know if anything had happened in the Multiverse before we came? Any big events, which could be the cause of this? Perhaps you’ve heard something from someone or…”

“You know well enough that I stay out of others’ business,” the scientist cut him off — not rudely, but firmly.

“Yes, but…”

“Leave him be,” the destroyer brushed it off, frowning. There was an odd undertone of acceptance to his voice. “That’s useless, ink stain. You can’t make that nerd talk. Speaking from experience.”

“What did you do to him?” The guardian instantly tensed.

“Do you just assume I always do something to everyone?” He gave Ink a fake accusatory look then grinned mockingly. “Not that it isn’t true though… in most cases.”

Error squinted, satisfied with the impact of his theatrics. The artist touched his cheek, considering whether he should keep the glitch _in line_ — literally — and get revenge for all the times he’d been strung up while he’s at it, but he was stopped by Sci’s calm voice.

“Don’t worry, Ink. I’m fine.”

The scientist wasn’t taking his eyes off the screen, and it was clear that the glitch’s presence didn’t bother him in the slightest. Sci used to be more apprehensive once, since his magic wasn’t particularly strong, and he couldn’t boast being able to protect himself. But over time it became clear that the Multiverse needed him alive, so he stopped fearing death. Besides, Reaper turned out to be good company and shared his love for coffee. And the more Sci got involved in lives of other universes, the more stable his mental state became.

In the end, it allowed him to fill in an interesting position. A neutral one, to be precise. On one hand, he never refused anyone’s requests, didn’t aspire for anything and never got involved in anyone’s business, which was why he had no beef with anyone — which was more than most people could boast. On the other hand, nothing could scare or rattle him; neither threats nor blackmail had worked on the scientist in a long while — he’d seen and been through too much already. That’s why he’d learned his value and wasn’t above being brazen when he needed to be, which tended to surprise those who’d never dealt with such a cool-headedness.

The guardian let out a heavy sigh, as he was sure that talking peacefully wasn’t a part of Error’s methods of persuasion. But if nothing came of it and Sci was so calm, then it was doubtful that the scientist was in any danger this time. At least, that’s what Ink wanted to believe. That, and there had to be a reason for the destroyer’s special treatment when it came to this AU.

“Whatever you say.” He gave in, desummoning the barely formed strings.

Still, getting his payback with the glitch’s own magic was too enticing an idea to give it up so easily, so he decided to keep it in mind just in case and habitually reached towards his neck — only the scarf wasn’t there. He really needed a new way to take notes…

Ink squinted, feeling a sudden bout of vertigo and odd flickering in his eyes, when numbers covered the space in front of him again. Only this time it wasn’t the code of the world, but a small black panel that glitched at regular intervals while hanging in the air.

Before the artist was even hit with surprise, he realized that it felt similar to the strings, which meant it was the other’s magic. He looked at Error from the corner of his eye, but the other didn’t seem to have noticed anything. Following an odd instinct, he touched the panel and, moving his fingers, typed up a phrase, even though there was no keyboard in sight — the letters just popped up in his mind. After he was done, the panel vanished, taking the note with it, but somehow Ink knew that he’d be able to summon it again.

The destroyer let out a noise of understanding at his simple hand movements.

“So you’ve found the console? Keep in mind, writing anything similar to code inside it is dangerous. You could break everything the Multiverse is built on, and then I’d be out of work.” He was still smirking, yet there was a hint of worry in his voice, which meant that Ink really shouldn’t mess with that thing — or with any of his powers, really. He should always keep in mind that this magic was capable of erasing worlds.

“Console? So did you see it or not?” the guardian asked, surprised. He was sure no one had reacted to the panel appearing.

“No. It only exists for you. You know, it’s pretty useful when you’re the only person who can get into your own head. Well, that’s not counting the voices.” In response to Ink’s baffled stare the glitch let out a laugh with a hint of madness to it. Yet that mirth was short-lived — an important thought got him distracted, and his eyelights flickered to exclamation points. “Speaking of the console. Was it empty?”

“There was nothing apart from what I’ve written.”

“That was either caused by the switch, or something went and erased my data.” Error’s expression grew darker, though not by much. The shortage of red didn’t let him get angry at the situation, but there was enough purple for him to feel annoyed. “Both scenarios are bad, but the latter is worse.”

The artist only marginally understood what the other was talking about, but the tone let him know this wasn’t good. He turned to Sci, who was already setting up some equipment, and decided to repeat his attempt at persuasion, even though he knew nothing was likely to come of it. There wasn’t a thing in the Multiverse that could force a word out of the scientist, if the word in question wasn’t meant for others’ ears — even if those ears were metaphorical. Heck, even a glare from Fresh had no effect on him — and that went beyond things imaginable.

“Sci, I know you never ask inconsequential questions and tell on no one, but can’t you tell us anything? This could be connected to our case as well.” He looked at the scientist with a tiny spark of hope. Sci pondered it for a few minutes, then nodded, finding a safe resolution. Dealing with good guys was always easier.

“All I can say is… talk to your friends. They shouldn’t keep any secrets from you.”

At that Error almost burst out laughing again but stopped himself, turning away. Luckily, the guardian didn’t notice a thing, too focused on Sci’s words.

“Are you talking about…?”

“Yes, he’s clearly talking about your star idiots.” The glitch was quick to realize how to play his sneer off so that no one would suspect a thing. “And I can even guess why they got the brainiac involved. Must’ve been searching for your rainbow ass, huh?”

“Will you quit calling me that?” Ink cringed a bit. The unflattering nicknames never bothered him much — apart from those that focused on his height — but now he perceived them as… more upsetting? Besides, Error threw all of those insults while in his body, which was weird to begin with.

“Ask Dream. Because you can only dream of it!”

The guardian frowned at a yet another mocking remark, then thought of something better than taking the bait.

“Ask Dream? Sure! My phone should be in the pocket. But guess which one of us gets to call him?” He smirked victoriously, and Error realized he was screwed, big time.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me…”

“It’s not like you’re busy right now. Sure, you can save up your questions for a face-to-face meeting — which still needs to happen at some point — but you do realize that we’d only end up wasting time that way? I didn’t realize you love my body so much you want to stick around.” The wide and way too sly grin was what did it for the glitch.

“Damned ink stain…” he muttered, taking out the blasted device. “Ha! Seriously? This is your contact list? Just names, no weird nicknames? Thought you were an artist — and yet you have no imagination.” The destroyer did his best to get back at Ink _somehow_ , but the other paid no mind to it.

“Call him already. And no funny business.”

“I’ve got this. If anything, I’ve heard way too much of your yammering.”

Before pushing the call button, he took a sip of yellow, but even with that addition it was hard to feel happy about this. Error sighed and did his best to think of it as a necessary data collection and, really, the sooner they found out _something_ , the better.

Finally, the ringing stopped. The destroyer gestured for Ink to move farther away, so that the glitching wouldn’t be heard through the phone, and put the call on speaker.

“Hello… Dream?” he started, hesitant, but instantly pulled away from the phone: rumbling and noises came from the other end of the line, as if something fell over with a crash, and then Dream’s voice came through. Usually soft and gentle, he sounded almost panicked.

“Ink?! I don’t believe it. Could it be… Please, tell me it really is you!”

Wincing at such a loud cry — especially considering the sunshine of a guardian rarely raised his voice — the glitch smirked at the irony of the situation and brazenly lied.

“Yep, that’s me.”

A new portion of noises and sobs came out of the speaker. Dream seemed to be crying.

“S-sorry. I’m just so happy… I’ve been searching for you! I’ve searched all over the Multiverse, and you weren’t anywhere to be found! W-where are you right now?... What’s happened to you? I… I thought you were dead!”

That last statement made all three people present in the room shudder and listen in, paying close attention to what was happening on the other end of the phone call. Even Sci stopped adjusting the equipment, though he didn’t look particularly surprised. Perhaps, that was because he’d heard similar sentiments many times before, or maybe he’d already heard all of this the time Dream had come to visit him earlier.

Error sighed and, summoning up all of his politeness, tried to make his voice sound worried and friendly — which wasn’t easy, since the destroyer had never been good at consoling people. He remembered his attempt at talking Blue into stopping his crying, which ended up with him crashing instead — though, surprisingly enough, it worked. But that probably wasn’t an option right now. He kind of forgot how emotional Dream was — unlike his inky friend. Which made sense, since he was basically made of emotions.

“Dream, please, slow down. I’m… okay. Mostly.” Despite the words that were leaving his mouth, the glitch’s expression clearly said, _yeah, right_. He was inwardly glad that Dream couldn’t see him right now. “Better tell me why you thought that In… that I was dead?” This question bothered him the most. The guardian of dreams definitely knew of his friend’s immortality, and he probably shouldn’t have had such a strong reaction, but the worry in his voice was clearly genuine.

Meanwhile the sobs died down, but the dreamer’s voice was still shaky.

“When you went missing… First thing I tried was getting into the Doodle Sphere, but I couldn’t get through.”

“What do you mean, ‘you couldn’t’?... You do have the ‘key’, right?” The destroyer was surprised, remembering Ink’s words.

“That’s the thing. At first I thought you’d changed the lock for some reason, so I found Reaper and asked him to take me there. But even he couldn’t break into your dimension.”

“The god of Death himself couldn’t do that?” With each word spoken the very idea seemed more and more absurd to everyone present.

You couldn’t hide a thing from Reaper. As they say, you can’t run from death and you can’t cheat it — and even if you managed to do that, generally you’d just be making things harder for yourself. And the fact that both Ink and Error could bear his touch did nothing to help them — on the contrary, it just added to their troubles. This was especially enraging for the latter, since Reaper’s obsession with touching and the glitch’s haphephobia were incompatible.

Ink had a more relaxed attitude towards the whole touching thing and even got something out of it, since for good portion of hugs Reaper — despite normally staying out of everyone’s business — could offer his help, as long as it didn’t exceed his authority. Yet the guardian was still mildly annoyed by his habit of coming uninvited and, usually, at the worst moment possible. And not even the strongest of dimension locks helped, since they were nothing before his scythe. So the claim that Reaper wasn’t able to get into some place sounded at the very least implausible.

“He was very surprised as well,” the dreamer affirmed, apparently barely able to believe his own words. “And he could neither confirm nor deny that you were dead — as you’re aware, you’re out of his jurisdiction. Of course, that left room for hope, but I panicked and, as a last resort…”

“Don’t tell me…” There was no need for extra purple paint for Error to sound resigned. “You asked Fresh?” He used the same intonation one would use for declaring the end of the world.

As if confirming the death sentence, Dream responded in a similar tone.

“I asked Fresh.”

“And?...”

“And nothing.”

A silence of comprehension hung over the room. Once they realized the true meaning of what had been said, the glitch jerked the phone away in shock, and Ink got covered in glitches, ending up on the verge of another reboot. Sci had to swiftly pull him even farther away so that Dream wouldn’t hear the scratchy sound of the growing static. Error almost jumped at the spot.

“What do you mean ‘nothing’?! Are you joking? That parasite can get into anywhere!”

Dream was unperturbed by such a violent reaction. One of the few things the guardian and the destroyer agreed on was their attitude towards the epileptic nightmare in question — both preferred to avoid him. Even Ink — who was adamant about keeping universes safe — had to give one up just so that the “90s nightmare” would keep his head down. But the parasite wasn’t known for staying put and still regularly messed with everything and everyone — especially his favorite “bro”.

After such onsets of “brotherly love” coming from Fresh, the poor glitch usually hid away in Chocotale for a long time, even forgoing his mission to destroy AUs for a while. And though that was a good thing in the artist’s eyes, Ink couldn’t bring himself to be entirely happy about it and instead felt sorry for the destroyer’s psyche, which wasn’t stable even at the best of times.

“That’s what I’m saying!” Dream sounded even more agitated. “Besides, both of them told me… they felt as if they were trying to get into a place that didn’t exist. You have no idea how scared I was then! It’s as if someone or something just… erased your dimension and you along with it. I went to Sci for help, but he couldn’t tell me anything in particular. After all, the Doodle Sphere isn’t a part of the Multiverse, and he knows very little about it.” Everyone in the room was listening to that speech with baited breath. There were suddenly even more questions now.

“That’s odd… Because it’s not gone. I woke up there, and the portals work as usual. And the ‘key’ is the same as before,” the destroyer muttered, confused, and looked up at Ink for confirmation, to which the other gave a confident nod. Error’s eyelights spun as spirals, then changed into exclamation points — one upright and one upside down — when he realized he hadn’t asked one very important question. “Wait. Dream, when did you see me last? When did I go missing? And… what were we doing before that?”

“You don’t remember? Oh, right… Sorry. I lost contact with you two weeks ago, Dreamtale time. At the time everything was peaceful and no one messed with the universes, so you went home and made it into a small day-off. But the following day I suddenly felt something odd — as if the whole Multiverse was shaken to its core. And it didn’t feel like a world falling apart or a disbalance in emotions. It was… something else.

“Considering your connection to the universes, I was sure you’d felt it too, so I immediately went to see you only to suddenly find out that your dimension was closed off. I tried to call you or even summon you through ink, but you didn’t pop up anywhere, and…

“Dammit, Ink! Do you have any idea how worried I was?! Don’t you dare scare me like that ever again, you hear?” He let out a noisy breath, apparently, finally able to calm down. Those last words had a hint of a purely friendly reproach to them, and the serious tone failed to conceal his joy.

“I’m sorry, Dream,” Error managed to say, feeling vaguely annoyed even despite the overwhelming positivity. Though the words that followed came out easier. “What’s important is that I’m alive and I’m back. And I too want to know what’s happened. Could we meet up later and discuss it all?”

“Yes, of course!” That news evaporated the last shreds of worry, and Error didn’t need to see Dream to know he was practically glowing with joy. “I’m in Underswap. Blue was very worried about you as well.”

“Tell him I’ll be there soon. I just need to handle a few things first.”

“Hope to see you as soon as possible!”

“Yeah… Bye…” He was relieved to end the call and almost immediately tossed the phone to Ink, trying to recover.

Sure, yellow paint made his thoughts lean towards happiness, making him see a positive side to everything, but it didn’t evoke unstoppable affection for everyone in the vicinity, so holding back from mockery and acting nice in front of the person the glitch held no sympathy for was beyond his powers — meaning the issue of surviving that meeting in person was still unresolved.

Upon looking at his phone, the artist remembered that Error had recently snatched his own device from him and hesitantly suggested:

“Listen, why don’t we exchange our numbers? That would make things easier.”

“Yeah, so that you can annoy me with your friendship propositions over the phone as well? Fat chance. I’ve already told you about the strings, even though I shouldn’t have.” The destroyer was quick to reject the idea.

“But what if we need to talk and meeting up in person isn’t an option? That could happen, right? And just think — do you want us seen together? Personally, I don’t really care, but I doubt you’d be happy about it.” Ink kept being insistent.

That’s when Sci — who’d finished setting up the odd equipment hooked up to his computer — chimed in.

“I could lend you disposable phones. With a secure connection. Would that help?”

The glitch tensely glared at the scientist for a few minutes but gave in eventually. Again. Seriously, since when had he started to agree to everything so easily?

“Fine, brainiac, get your crap in here. But keep in mind, rainbow, you call me for no good reason, and…”

“Emergency calls only,” the guardian hurried to agree, smiling happily. He was fine with this.

Error frowned and looked away, returning his attention to Sci.

“Okay, and now, since the dreamer gave us his approval, quit pretending to be a mime and tell us what you know. I didn’t go through all of that for nothing.”

Now that there was nothing holding him back, the scientist nodded and enthusiastically dived into explaining.

“Dream really did come here together with Blue, and he was looking for Ink. And that ‘shaking’ he’d mentioned really did happen, though, as far as I know, no one noticed it apart from those who’re capable of moving across universes. I don’t open portals myself, but I seem to have a sensitivity for this thanks to my frequent contact with such tears in space. And I’m not sure how to describe it, but it seems like something has happened to space itself — yet not the space of out Multiverse but rather… outside of it. Beyond its limits.”

“Beyond its limits? So, something happened to our voids — that’s what you’re trying to say? Do you think that’s why they ended up isolated?” Ink suggested, sounding uncertain.

“I have no other theories so far. I’ve been researching Alternate Universes long enough, but the Anti-Void and the Doodle Sphere are beyond the system’s limits and don’t obey the same laws. The cause and effect are unpredictable — meaning it could be the thing that lead to you switching. But I can’t say anything for sure until I have the data I need. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to scan you — and, ideally, your dimensions as well.”

He finally showed them the machine he was working on so intently before and gestured for Ink to come closer and stand under the radiation. The artist obediently walked under it and a moment later experienced an odd and almost forgotten feeling — inside his chest, where there had always been a void, was something that filled it up from the inside, responded to emotions and quite obviously pulsed under the alien magical interference.

Ever since the guardian woke up inside this body, he vaguely felt that bundle of energy, but now the magic flow got a lot stronger, making him focus on it and fully convincing him of one thing. It was definitely a soul. A real one. And its presence wasn’t uncomfortable or painful — rather, very unfamiliar but, at the same time, completely natural, as if that’s how things were supposed to be. Involuntarily, Ink squeezed his eyes shut and held his hand over his chest. That’s when he processed the second part of the request.

“Wait, you mean, you want to waltz around the Anti-Void and the Doodle Sphere with your equipment?”

“Yes, something like that,” Sci responded, leaning towards the screen again and focusing on the data that showed up.

“Are you serious? A shut-in such as yourself wants to leave the lab? Last time you left was when Nightmare dragged you outta here with his tentacles — and even that took some effort,” Error reminded him with a disbelieving smirk on his face. At the artist’s worried glance, he hastily added, “Relax, ink stain, that time the nightmares suffered more than he did. Sure, this brainiac knows how to keep up appearances, but he’s no stranger to emotions — unlike one soulless bastard I know.” He paused for a second with a look of _not that I’m implying anything_ , then enthusiastically continued with a soft laugh, “And just imagine, upon entering the castle this guy went about coming up with theories about the dark magic reforming the world and did it with such passion, that the octopus spent the following week suffering from indigestion thanks to the positive emotions that surfaced from his scientific interest. And, most importantly, he didn’t voice any of it, so there wasn’t even anything he could be directly blamed for! And they know — the bastards — that they can’t kill him, since he’s so useful. So that was tons of fun! Maybe, there’s even a record of it somewhere in the archive…”

He cut himself off mentally. The archive… That magic could show the past, any time period in any universe… Dammit! They needed to fix everything before Ink got familiar with that ability and had the “bright” idea to look into things that didn’t concern him, skipping the questioning completely. Trying to cover up his own discomfiture, the destroyer grinned and held his arms out wide, as if summing up the story.

“In short, they never take him out of his lab and into random places anymore.”

“That’s a pity, by the way. I was hoping to stay there for longer to test a couple of my theories. And to be honest, I’ve wanted to examine your dimensions for a while now!” If Sci’s eyes could turn to stars, they would’ve definitely done that then and there — that’s how excited and awestruck he sounded when talking about it. Still, the scientist quickly came down to earth. “But there hasn’t been a good opportunity to ask, and Ink might be fine with it, but I doubt you would’ve agreed — under any other circumstances.” He flashed his glasses and for a moment a barely noticeable wily grin graced his face.

“Oh, don’t even think about it. You’re not getting into my Anti-Void without supervision.” The glitch tensed, crossing his arms. “Besides, you can’t stay there for long. That place drives people insane, and your brain is the only reason you’re still kept alive, you know. Though, to be honest, I’m not quite sure you’re all right in the head. And the story I’ve just told only confirms it.”

The scientist shrugged, turning his device back on again. An odd shadow of sadness or resignation or joyless irony showed in his eyes for a moment.

“I’m just as insane as many Sanses are. Memory is a heavy cross to bear. And knowledge of the Multiverse only doubles it. Some people break from it, some change — but I doubt you can call any of us sane. And I’ve also managed to accumulate so much knowledge that it keeps getting me in trouble with other worlds. I’ve long since accepted it.”

“And now you’re making the most of it,” the destroyer added, squinting, and reluctantly stood under the magic rays.

“I won’t deny it,” Sci agreed, skimming through the results of the scan. “Hm… Well… You… are fine. By your standards. The magic, the soul readings… or the lack of them. I’ll never get used to it.”

“So all of this was a waste of time?” Error growled with a threat rising in his voice.

“No, it just means I should look deeper into it. So far I can only say that you’re not injured and there’s no obvious interference of alien magic. Which, by the way, isn’t that bad of a news. But I’ll need time to examine this in more detail. It’s not as easy as you think. And I’d still like to get access to your abodes.”

“The Doodle Sphere is safe…” Ink said thoughtfully, reminding everyone of his presence, since before he was too consumed with the suddenly distinct feeling of his own soul.

Though, truthfully, it wasn’t “his own” but belonged to Error, yet right now the guardian perceived it as his own, and wanted to soak up the feeling with _all of his soul_. The lukewarm energy-filled heart obediently responded, bringing some previously unknown thrill up in him, and that couldn’t not make him happy. Though there was one slightly upsetting detail: the artist couldn’t touch it.

The soul of the glitch suited him in every aspect and was more of a glitched-out shadow of itself — semitransparent and mottled with errors, it shivered and flickered and sometimes even disappeared for a few short milliseconds, giving its current owner a scare every single time. And, sadly, his fingertips simply passed through it, as if the soul — just like the destroyer himself — had haphephobia and avoided any contact the best it could. But even so it was the realest thing he’d ever felt. It was weird and wonderful, and at the same time there was something long-lost and familiar to it, and now he was even more reluctant to go back to the emptiness and the paints than he was before.

For a moment Ink even thought that, really, he wouldn’t have minded leaving things as they were, but quickly pushed that notion away. He couldn’t do that — not to Error. That would’ve been too selfish. Though, when wasn’t his behavior selfish? He smiled joylessly, and he didn’t need cyan paint to feel the glitchy heart shake from all the stress. So this is how it felt? Well, he deserved it. Sighing heavily, the guardian hastily hid the soul away again and joined the conversation before its real owner could notice anything and throw a new portion of accusations at him.

“Just don’t touch the AU pages. They act as a one-sided portal,” he warned the scientist.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Sci nodded, and the destroyer shoved the brush the artist was still holding to gain the other’s attention.

“Yeah, great… Get ready, rainbow asshole. We’ve got nothing else to do here. Get me to Underswap.”

“You do know you can open a portal yourself?” The artist offered him the paintbrush, but Error instantly stumbled back, almost as far as the other side of the room.

“No. Fucking. Paint!” he hissed through his teeth.

“But how are you going to teleport without my help?”

“I’ll ask your sunny friend for help, and I’ll figure it out from there! Quit wasting time. I do remember how long it took you last time.”

“ _Sooner or later you’ll come to me for help anyway,_ ” Ink whispered barely audibly, then shrugged and turned away, focusing on searching for the coordinates they needed.

He’d never understood the reasons for the glitch’s stubbornness when it came to some things. Though, to be fair, he was just about as headstrong. But it would’ve been nice if they agreed on anything other than being so adamant about standing their ground.

“So, you’re going to see Dream, and I’m going to Nightmare’s? Correct me if I’m wrong, but Nightmare’s castle is in the former Haventale, right?” he clarified, remembering that was the universe the blackened page belonged to.

“It should still be there. And I doubt he would’ve changed his base of operations. The octopus would never give you the slightest chance to reclaim that AU,” the destroyer replied, apathetic.

“You’re right… But I hope that means they hadn’t taken over one more universe.” The guardian did his best to think positively, but the thought of having to go see the results of their failure in person — while being unable to block out his emotions — made him nauseous. “Anyway, I need the ‘key’.”

The glitch nodded, giving him the magical combination. He wasn’t worried about Nightmare considering it a betrayal. He was never too bothered about the doings of the nightmare gang, and he’d live just fine with that slimeball’s resentment. What he wasn’t fine with was staying in his current state even longer.

A couple of minutes spent looking into the code of the world — and, with a more confident motion than before, Ink opened three different glitchy portals.

The first one led to a truly negative place, which was so depressing that you didn’t need to be Dream to feel the strong negative aura that pretty much saturated the air. The unnaturally red sky contrasted sharply with the near-black charred trees and half-ruined houses, which bore signs of battles that no one had bothered to cover up. The ground was covered with something dark-gray, and it wasn’t easy to make out, whether it was snow or dust — though it’s not like one would want want to know the answer to that question, since it was awfully obvious.

At such a sorry sight of the formerly lightest and fully pacifistic world, the artist swallowed shakily. The loss of this world was one of the heaviest blows to the balance of the Multiverse, and, as if to add insult to the injury, Nightmare moved there from Dreamtale, never forgetting to remind the guardians of their failure. And yet, Ink still needed to go in there…

The second portal opened up to a more friendly universe. The outskirts of the swapped Snowdin, to be precise — a little ways away from the city and any witnesses. If anyone saw the guardian of the Multiverse come out of a hole in the code, it would’ve raised way too many unnecessary questions. Besides, even in the past Ink tried not to attract too much attention so as not to mess with the events of the AUs he visited.

The third portal led back to the Doodle Sphere and was opened specially for Sci.

“So, if I leave it be, it wouldn’t close on its own, right?” the artist asked, uncertain, as he rubbed at his tired eyes and hurried to put the glasses back on. His head was spinning from looking into the code.

“Nope,” was the glitch’s short answer. He almost stepped through the portal when his eyes caught on one important detail. “I’ve almost forgot…”

“And while you’re still here…” The guardian must’ve noticed something as well.

“Put my jacket on the right way!” they both said in unison and froze, staring at each other.

A little way away from them Sci couldn’t hold back a laugh but hastily attempted to mask it with a cough, fixing his eyes on his calculations again. This earned him a glare of two red crosshair eyelights. Ink, however, joined Sci in laughing, redirecting the destroyer’s anger to himself.

Error cringed but wrapped the scarf around his neck and tied the jacket around his hips, while the artist, on the contrary, put it on to wear it as normal.

And no matter how the guardian wished he could keep his beloved paintbrush, he had to give it back to maintain his image. The glitch wasn’t happy about it either but put up with it — if only because, despite its massive size, he couldn’t feel the weapon’s weight and it didn’t get in his way. Which, again, surprised him and served as a reminder of the short stack’s hidden strength.

They were giving each other appraising looks, when Error frowned and, with a look of displeasure, took the glasses off his own face.

“Hey! I can’t see a thing without them!” Ink protested, trying to snatch them back, but the other pulled back the edge of the black-and-blue hoodie and, ignoring the protests, put the glasses into the inside pocket.

“You’re not going into Nightmare’s den wearing those,” he said with an air of finality. “That’s akin to screaming to the whole Multiverse about my weakness. No one’s supposed to know about them at all!”

“But have you considered that I’d be more vulnerable without them? But, sure, what could be better than paying a visit to the worst psychopaths and murderers in the Multiverse while you’re half-blind?” He crossed his arms, staring down the destroyer. It was hard to tell, whether his voice was more sarcastic or glitched.

“They’re not stupid enough to try attacking me.” The glitch tried to brush him off but remembered who they were talking about and ended up doubting his own words. Sure, they weren’t stupid, but they were insane, and you could expect just about anything from someone like that. He sighed and called out to Sci, “Hey, scientist! If you have any bright ideas, it’s time to share them.”

The other was quick to walk over and examine the red eye-sockets, shining a light into them and checking something with a strange device of some sort, while also glancing at the data from the recent check-up.

“That’s the impact of your magic, right?” he asked thoughtfully as his eyes lingered on the blue streaks of the other’s cheeks.

“Uh… Something like that… It got worse when I started looking into the code more. And considering I have to do that to destroy abominations, it really had gone a lot worse,” Error replied reluctantly. The subject of his eyesight was personal and embarrassing, and speaking of it in front of his mortal enemy was degrading.

“I think I can help. I have a similar problem. But I’d treat this seriously if I were you. I take it, you’ve never even tried to do anything about it? That’s pretty irresponsible.” Sci took a few glowing liquids out of a cabinet and set to mixing them, calculating the required formula in his head.

“Who cares… It doesn’t get in the way of me doing my job.”

“You do realize you don’t see the code while wearing classes? If you kept wearing them, it wouldn’t have gotten this bad. And you’re just making things worse instead.” The guardian clearly sounded reproachful, but that tone concealed pretty genuine concern.

“It’s none of your business!” the glitch snapped, not knowing what to do with himself. If it wasn’t for the shortage of red paint, he would’ve already gone berserk and torn this place apart.

“Of course, it’s not my business. As always,” Sci replied, utterly calm, and returned, handing over a few small flasks. “The effect should last for a few hours, but I wouldn’t expect it to be stable. I haven’t had the opportunity to test this compound.” He watched Ink drink one of them and blink rapidly, waited for it to kick in and asked, “How is it?”

“Still blurry. But better. Thanks.” The artist managed a weak smile.

“That’s temporary. I’ll try to study the issue more thoroughly, but if it gets worse again, you know where to find me. And, Error, think about my offer. I’ve been studying the Multiverse long enough to have learned of amazing things — both of  magic and technological kind. And you know I’m always happy to help.”

Instead of answering, the destroyer muttered something unintelligible, quickly disappearing inside a portal. Ink sighed, hid the medicine away and walked into a different portal, closing off two of them and leaving Sci in the lab alone with a passage open to the Doodle Sphere.

A shadow fell over the guardian’s face once he looked over the revolting scenery of the world swallowed by darkness. He was about to meet a real Nightmare.


	6. The Dark Side

****Although Ink was complaining about the glitch’s poor eyesight not five minutes ago, right now he was sort of glad that the image in front of his eyes was a little blurry. Seeing the surrounding devastation was draining — and that wasn’t something he had any desire to see anyway. He closed one eye — the one that was nearsighted — to avoid seeing things nearby, and focused on Nightmare’s castle, which stood some ways away, looming over the former town of Snowdin — or, rather, what remained of it — like a dark shadow.

Dirty snow squeaked under his slippers, staining them with dark gray dust; abnormally cold and heavy air put pressure onto the non-existent lungs, and each step seemed to be harder to make than the one before it. He wouldn’t have minded teleporting to his destination, but the destroyer’s teleportation differed from his own, paint-based one, and it was definitely not the time or the place to try and get it figured out. _Definitely_ not the right place. Ink gulped. Even when they’d lost this world, and he was drinking cyan in liters, he never felt so… so… He didn’t even know how to describe his current state.

The odd feeling gnawed at him from the inside, burning all the way through his borrowed soul, making everything shrink inside him, and time and again his bones were wracked with tremors and a burning sensation. He wanted to leave, scramble away in blind panic, never looking back, and never return. Blind panic?... Right… The guardian shuddered, swallowing the invisible lump in his throat. He must’ve finally figured it out. _He was scared._

Ink had never felt fear before. Sure, he had a survival instinct, which led him to take care of himself and avoid danger. And he was worried about his friends’ survival, protecting them and worlds in general, since he wasn’t eager to be left all alone or to feel the pain of the destruction of the Alternative Universes. He also couldn’t stand white or empty spaces, almost never drank white paint and didn’t let other colours to run out completely, unable to stand the emptiness inside. But all of that was more of a not-wanting-to-lose-something, rather than fear.

Fear is a feeling. And yes, he’d discovered the corresponding paint, which turned out to be gray — the white colour he so hated mixed with the one responsible for that very hatred. It looked bland and plain, but its effects… Just one taste of it was enough for him to blacklist that blend once and for all. Despite his love for experimentation, the guardian avoided some of the most negative emotions. Technically, that meant he was scared of feeling fear. But, despite the concerns, the real, genuine terror — one that made your soul beat like crazy and your body shake like a leaf, willing to do anything just to avoid the object of your phobia — was something Ink had never experienced.

Never, that is, until the moment he’d found himself in the Anti-Void, sporting the looks of his eternal rival.

***

 _The first thing he realized upon coming to was that all of his bones ached, like they did after an especially vicious battle. Those weren’t rare, but his whole body felt like it was was burning at the same time, which was a new experience. Moreover, his head was ringing, and everything blurred before his eyes — if there was anything to blur, that is, since all around him, as far as he could see, was the white void he so abhorred. But the weirdest thing was that all of that made him_ **_feel bad_ ** _— not physically, but emotionally — and that had him confused. It had never happened before. Yet now he clearly felt that he_ **_didn’t like_ ** _this void. No, that wasn’t quite right. He_ **_hated_ ** _it,_ **_despised_ ** _it — it crushed him, absorbed him and_ **_scared_ ** _him beyond all things imaginable._

 _Ink didn’t understand what was going on with him, but one thing was clear. He was experiencing feelings. And those feelings were far from pleasant. The artist couldn’t remember what lead to him being in this state, and didn’t find it surprising — his memory could have even worse malfunctions at times. He instinctively reached for his scarf then, hoping to find the answer there, but his favorite possession wasn’t there. And before he could ask himself where it had gone to, he realized that instead of glove-wrapped white and gray bones the phalanxes were black and red and yellow. He couldn’t tell any better, since the image before his eyes was blurring something awful. But even so, he managed to lift himself up a bit and squint down at himself. It took a couple of minutes for the realization to hit, but once it hit him… That’s when he got scared_ **_for real_** _._

_His whole body was overtaken by an unknown fever, as if the guardian was dunked into the lava of Hotland; his hearing was plagued with noise and high-pitched squeaky sounds; his head was pounding, forcing him to hold onto it, curl up and squeeze his eyes shut, and then… nothing. A blackout. His consciousness went out like a light, as if the whole world froze. He had no idea how long he’d spent laying like that, curled up on the floor of the Anti-Void. It could be a few minutes or it could be an eternity. But then the consciousness returned — suddenly and in a flash, just like it had gone._

_Breathing heavily and shuddering either with the glitches or with the onslaught for feelings, he struggled into a sitting position and tried to wrap his mind around his current predicament again. It wasn’t going well: his thoughts kept getting tangled, his mind was distracted by the flitting uncontrollable emotions, and the mounting shock kept knocking him out time after time. It took about seven reboots — he didn’t have the exact count — before he could regain his bearings and calm down somewhat._

_He was_ **_scared_** _. He was terribly_ **_scared_ ** _and_ **_hurting_** _. Ink tried to focus, think logically, tried to remember what could’ve caused it, but each question he’d asked into the void left him more and more shocked. Was he really inside Error’s body? It seemed like that was the case — he saw no other possible explanation. And this wasn’t a dream? Or, rather, a nightmare? No, that was improbable: the soulless guardian never had either of those — except for the single one that was an almost forgotten memory. But if all of this was real, then how had he ended up in the other’s body? His memory wasn’t being helpful. And, perhaps, for the first time ever this lack of knowing_ **_scared_ ** _him. What had happened to him? Where was his body? Were his friends okay? He didn’t know. He was worried about them. For the very first time in his entire life he was_ **_scared_ ** _for them._

_The artist missed the moment he’d started crying — for real, sincerely, shuddering with hysterical sobs and absolutely unashamed of it. The tears simply fell, showing no sign of stopping, burning his cheeks and soaking the sleeves of the hoodie that didn’t belong to him. Sounds reflected off invisible walls and returned as echo, but no one else heard them. Only the Anti-Void surrounded him — white, faceless, endless. And he was trapped inside it all alone. Without his own magic he wouldn’t be able to open a portal and get out. Was he stuck here for good? Ink couldn’t bear the thought of it but also couldn’t stop coming back to that idea time and time again._

_He couldn’t tell how long that breakdown had lasted — especially considering his occasional crashes. But at some point he simply got deathly tired of it — weary and weirdly resigned with a tone of apathy, as if his current predicament swiftly lost its colours and became as white and indifferent as the space that surrounded him. The guardian was worn out emotionally. It felt somewhat similar to the paints running out, yet a little different. More natural._

_But either way, his hysterics were over, and there was more space for thoughts in his head now. That’s when he got up and finally took a look around. And the first thing he discovered was that staring into space was a bad idea: his eyes started to hurt, and the space itself rippled, covering with strange symbols. Ink didn’t want to know the reasons behind that, although he had an inkling of an idea. But, more importantly, a little way away from him his eyes caught a glimpse of blue among the endless whiteness. Staying in one spot was torture, so, lacking any other options, he headed towards it. And although his whole body was still wracked with glitches, the pain was mostly gone._

_The blue turned out to be strings. A myriad of blue strings wove around this spot of the Anti-Void in complex tangles, wrapped around each other without a system to it and formed all sorts of things around the place: hammocks, swings and, sometimes, even full-fledged woven houses one could crawl into to hide from the outside world. This bore some semblance to a jungle: the strings hung down like vines, wrapped around themselves and climbed back up, getting lost somewhere in the overhanging darkness of the ceiling; the toys that hung around everywhere looked like exotic fruit, hanging off branches; and the cocoons of strings beckoned him like predatory plants, ready to snap their trap shut and not let go until they absorbed him completely._

_Of course, he couldn’t see all of that well — it all just blurred into a bunch of patches of blue — but at the same time he could easily tell all of this apart with some sort of inner sight. With a bit of concentration the artist could easily tell one string from another and follow it, pulling it out of the general tangle. Even though he couldn’t see them, he could feel them, as if he was one with them. It simultaneously amazed him and filled him with unease._

_That’s when he was once again hit by the realization. This was Error’s body. Carefully, wary of crashing again, he looked down and tried to examine himself in more detail this time. Nothing came out of it, so, slowly, he ran his hands down his body, hoping the destroyer wouldn’t kill him for it later. He felt something hard hidden under the hoodie at chest level and, upon checking that spot, he found an inside pocket, which held glasses with wide red rims._

_His faulty memory piped up then and came up with a recollection that was very dear to Ink — the memory of their first meeting in Outertale. That was the only time he’d seen the destroyer wearing this very pair of glasses. Turned out, he always had them on his person. Without a second thought, Ink put them on and instantly felt better. With glasses in place, the surrounding emptiness stopped falling apart into numbers as soon as he let his eyes linger on a single spot for more than a few seconds, and everything looked sharper in general, which left the guardian with an overwhelming sense of relief._

_That aside, the clothes were ordinary, yet, after giving it some thought, he realized wearing a jacket didn’t feel comfortable. Sure, Ink was used to wearing many layers of clothes and felt almost naked if he only had a t-shirt on, but, for whatever reason, he didn’t like the hoodies most Sanses so adored. And yet he didn’t feel comfortable without a jacket tied around his waist. So, without a second thought, he took it off and habitually tied it around his hips._

_Strangely enough, the little attempt at dressing up helped him clear his thoughts a bit — though not enough for him to calm down fully. So, unable to come up with a better idea, the artist climbed into the nearest hammock and swung inside it. Thanks to that seemingly simple and childish urge, he was overcome with a faint yet so childish bout of joy — and he didn’t need any yellow paint to feel it. Yeah, these emotions sure were disorienting — everything, that was happening, was as well. Ink had already caught himself reflexively reaching for his sash multiple times, but it was never there, which echoed with unfamiliar heaviness somewhere deep in his chest, but he couldn’t understand the reasons for it just yet._

_He didn’t understand much in general. Though he was fully aware he wouldn’t — not in the state he was in. That’s why he sighed and tried to distract himself from all of this, closing his eyes and sprawling on top of the soft and surprisingly cosy knitted fabric. The hammock turned out to be extremely comfortable — apparently, Error knew well how to make things comfy for himself. Though the guardian still couldn’t fathom how the other could ever do without any common furniture._

_But that thought dissipated too, when a few minutes later he’d managed to relax a little and almost mindlessly started to slip down the strings with his magic, as if “getting a feel” for the destroyer’s abode. It just sort of happened, and sometimes Ink discovered toys or other hammocks — made of strings as well — or even — to his utter horror — string-wrapped human souls, which he hastily “looked away” from. But there was nothing else unusual around here._

_So the artist was a little surprised to come across something hard, smooth and, apparently, metal — and also noted that the strings could feel the surrounding space the same way that he would, were he to touch those objects. He’d never known about that quirk of the destroyer’s magic, and for a moment he wondered what the other felt when stringing him up. The thought was… embarrassing all of a sudden._

_Shooing that thought away, Ink got out of the hammock and, led by his curiosity, headed in the direction he needed until he came across a refrigerator, that hung among the strings. It was small — the size of a cupboard — and worked on who knows what — if it even worked at all — and, come to think of it, food never spoiled inside the Anti-Void, so the usefulness of such an item was somewhat questionable. But that was funny in its own way. Inside the fridge Ink found a huge stash of hot pepper chocolate and a cup of soda._

_And all of that came specifically from the thirteenth timeline of one of the Fell worlds. As far as he could remember, two things made that timeline stand out among others: this very chocolate and a Sans called Red, who ended up in Underswap through some sort of anomalous happenstance. And it wasn’t just a random Underswap, but the one where the Blue the guardian knew lived. And Red suddenly got attached to the Swap brothers and refused to return to his own timeline. Why the destroyer singled Red out from all the others was a mystery, but the fact remained — he was the poor guy that Error regularly stole things from, plundering all of his stashes and throwing Red into fits of uncontrollable rage. Yeah, Error sure had a sweet tooth, and he was a meanie too._

_Error… Another thought made Ink practically jump on the spot. If Ink was here, then what had happened to him? Was he okay? Was he… alive? Or perhaps… Ink’s head ached again: sharp realizations and sudden mind-blowing ideas clearly were a no-no for this body — that much he understood the third time he rebooted. But this time he’d managed to fight down the oncoming episode, though not without some effort. It reminded him of his own ink problem in a way. Heh, what a peculiar similarity. But, more importantly, if he was here, then what if Error was in a similar predicament? If only there was a way to know. It’s not like he could just go to the Doodle Sphere or call the other here. Ink’s own portals were unavailable, and he didn’t know how to open gaps in space with the glitch’s magic._

_Although… Why not try calling him? Ink’s hand reached for the soda cup…_

***

Ink shook his head, pushing the unpleasant memories away. Yes, he had been scared then and he was scared now, but it was normal. This was what being normal meant. And this was what he’d desired for so long. He wanted to be like everyone else — and everyone else seemed to be able to cope with this somehow. Take Dream and Blue, who’d been fighting by his side for years and faced events no less terrifying that what Ink was facing — and all that considering such negativity could literally hurt Dream, and Blue was clearly too young to live through something like this. So if they could deal with it, why wouldn’t Ink be able to? He’d chosen the burden of being the guardian of the Alternative Universes and was always able to find it in himself to live up to that title, even though he’d lived through situations way worse than this one.

He sighed deeply, putting his thoughts into order. The sharp icy air was sobering, letting him finally focus on his objective. After all, he didn’t even need to stay here for long — just long enough to ask a few questions and leave through a portal the first chance he got, explaining it with some destroyer business. Or he could even leave without saying a thing — Error probably didn’t need to have an excuse. And it wasn’t the first time he’d be meeting this gang. He’d figure it out.

Up close the castle turned out to be even more frightening than from afar. Fully weaved from Nightmare’s magic, it wasn’t just soaked in negative feelings — it was made of them. The shabby masonry that looked centuries old, the massive wooden gate, the crooked randomly-spaced towers and the threateningly sharp spires — this whole place looked like it belonged in a horror movie, and it evoked emotions to match. Ink’s desire to run for the hills and hide on the different side of the Multiverse grew exponentially.

Yet he’d have to come inside, and he needed to avoid arousing suspicion, which meant acting like the destroyer. It might have seemed hard — but not for him. The memories of the glitch were one of the few things his mind could recollect better than anything else, and he’d known the other for a long time. And, thankfully, if there was something Ink was as good at as drawing, it was pretending. After all, he’d been pretending for most of his life, and all that experience couldn’t be smothered by a couple of uncontrollable emotions. At least, that’s what Ink was hoping for.

Finally, pulling himself together, the guardian confidently pushed the heavy door, shivering at the prolonged creaking noise it made, and ended up in a large hall. The layout of Nightmare’s castle never changed, no matter where he built it, so the looks were faintly familiar, though Ink couldn’t recall his surroundings exactly, relying mostly on the sense of deja vu and on what he could remember of the few battles in Dreamtale. They’d managed to reclaim Dream’s home universe — though, actually, Nightmare let them have it, in a way, and soon they realized why.

Dreamtale wasn’t an AU in the fullest sense of the word. Originally it wasn’t even tied to this Multiverse and existed only as an abstraction. It gained its form and name only when the Spirit of the Tree used Blue as a source image for the birth of the guardians that would replace her. After that the world became an actual world and found its place almost at the very center of the Multiverse, sharing its borders with Undertale and Reapertale. Yet even so, in general, nothing tied it to the Original — and, in particular, in Dreamtale there had never been any timelines or a possibility of a reset. That was actually why Multiversal time was commonly measured using Dreamtale.

But, sadly, it also meant that, even after getting the world back, they weren’t able to effortlessly restore it. And, despite Dream’s best efforts at clearing the aura, it was still one of the most negativity-filled worlds — that’s how firmly was the energy of the olden catastrophe was embedded into it. The dreamer didn’t give up, of course, and Ink supported him as much as he could, but they had to regretfully admit that it would take a lot of time before they’d really be able to tear Nightmare’s home universe from his clutches.

The artist was distracted from looking around and his worrying thoughts by a noise — it sounded like someone was arguing. Which meant the nightmares were home and not trashing an AU — not a bad thing. Following the sound, Ink turned into one of the first floor rooms and ended up in a kitchen — or something resembling one, at least. Between the Bad Guys, there was no one to do the housework, so usually they stole food from the universes they were ravaging, just like the destroyer did.

The overwhelming laziness, inherent in all Sanses, was the first reason for such a state of affairs. The second one was currently fighting Dust and wildly swinging an axe, threatening to chop up Dust and also anyone else who happened to be less than five meters away from it. Half of the room was pretty much trashed, and Killer watched the scene unfold from the sidelines, simultaneously dodging the stray attacks and recording everything on his phone.

Too absorbed in what they were doing, no one paid attention to Ink’s arrival. As he was trying to make out the reason for fighting among the exclamations and swears, he finally saw a gleaming set of keys in the cannibal’s hands, which Dust was trying to steal from him by any means possible. Upon giving his surroundings a second glance, Ink noticed a lock on the fridge. Welp, mystery solved. Basically, the second reason was that keeping food and Horror in the same universe and hoping that the food would stay intact was, at the very least, naive.

After watching the battle unfold for a few minutes and realizing that there wouldn’t be an end to it in the nearest future, Ink carefully pulled out a blue string and, hoping alien magic wouldn’t let him down, directed it towards the fighters with a single sharp motion. The string instantly wrapped around the keyring, and, before anyone could notice, the keys were in the artist’s hands. He steadily walked up to the object of Horror’s desire, dodging purple bones, and tried to unlock it under the attentive gazes of Killer and his camera. The third key he tried worked, and only then did the inseparable duo finally realize that something was off and froze, staring at the guardian, who was peacefully examining the contents of the fridge.

He looked over the not-so-varied selection, which mostly consisted of snack food. At the same time a whole shelf was stuffed with raw meat, which was probably what the fight’s instigator was aiming for. At the very bottom of the fridge there was a drawer that looked way neater than the rest, as if everyone was afraid to go anywhere near it, and inside it Ink found familiar chocolate bars. Having decided that it was the easiest way to “get in character”, he took one bar — he could just imagine the fit Error would throw over it — and hastily locked up the fridge, hiding the keys in his pocket. Then he turned around, looking as laid-back as possible, and started at the destroyer’s favorite candy.

He remembered Blue telling him that the glitch was able to eat chocolate without unwrapping it, and although he wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull that stunt, the blue tongues turned out to be surpisingly easy to control and unwrapped the bar right inside his mouth. He was a bit surprised by it, but kept a straight face as he spat out the crumpled wrapper and threw it into a small tear in space. The artist knew of this particular habit of Error’s — and not just from Blueberry, since he also saw it happen with his own eyes when the glitch refused to litter in Outertale. Come to think of it, it was sort of funny how such small details hadn’t been erased by his constant forgetfulness.

He pretended not to notice the glares he was receiving, but he was actually ready to dodge a random attack at any moment — which, thankfully, he needn’t have worried about. Dust was the first to recover, letting the horrifyingly insane maniacal grin of his slip onto his face. Even though that kind of description would’ve been suitable for everyone present, each stare and grin were still unique and horrified people in their own distinct way. It was only now that Ink got a chance to appreciate this variety.

“Well, I’ll be… Look who’s back. And here we thought you’ve kicked the bucket.”

The guardian snorted. What a polite greeting. Well, he wasn’t going to leave that without a fitting response.

“No way I’m dying before you do, duster.”

The others exchanged some looks, and Ink considered the gesture as more or less positive, even though it was really hard to make proper judgement. But, at least, Dust desummoned his bones, which meant he had no intention to continue fighting. That’s when Horror got a grasp on the situation. With the psycho distracted, he swiftly threw him off himself and glared at the artist, axe raised and his lone eyelight flaring.

“Give me the keys!”

Ink gave the belligerent cannibal an appraising look, and only a hint of apprehension appeared at the back of his mind — and nothing more. Would the other attack or not? This seemed like a good opportunity to test a theory of his. He shrugged smoothly and held out a hand, the keyring hanging on one of his fingers. It was still wrapped in a string, and a few more of those hung off his other fingers. He grinned, hoping the expression would look the way he intended it to. His voice crackled menacingly.

“You want them? Come and get them.”

Horror gripped his axe tighter, glaring holes into the other for a few minutes, but in the end he chose not to risk it, taking a step back and earning himself a few venomous laughs from Dust. In the corner of the room, Killer laughed quietly as well, still filming. Though were those two in Horror’s shoes, they probably wouldn’t have dared to attack either, which was reassuring. Error was right after all, and his reputation of the destroyer of worlds worked its magic. Nightmare’s henchmen might’ve been insane, but they’d never shown themselves to have a death wish. It seemed that everything was going smoothly so far, and the guardian, enthused by his success, tried to speak as confidently and flippantly as possible.

“That’s what I thought. Where’s Nightmare? He and I need to talk. And if you answer quickly, I won’t tell him what kind of bull you’re doing here.”

The three of them instantly tensed — Horror looked especially nervous. Ink had already guessed that the fridge had been locked up for a reason, and the key was probably not supposed to end up in the glutton’s possession. And while Nightmare wasn’t all that bothered with his subordinates, he hated when they caused him any trouble. So breaking any rules or getting distracted from an important task could earn you a couple of broken ribs. By the way, that was what failing a mission resulted in as well, and although they were (somewhat) healed afterwards, no one wanted to annoy their boss. Dust crossed his arms, leaning on a jagged beaten pillar, and tugged his grey hood lower over his eyes.

“He’s in his study. In an extremely bad mood,” he said reluctantly. The artist smirked, playing the role of the self-assured destroyer Error was.

“Tell me something I don’t know. As if the octopus is ever in a good mood.”

Everyone present let out an involuntary laugh, though they all tried to hide it, as if Nightmare could hear them. As far as Ink could tell, he was the only person present, who would dare insult Nightmare — out loud and while in the same universe as him, at least. Still, it seemed like it led them to relax a little after the drop in the mood a minute ago. Dust sighed and went on, a little calmer now.

“Yes, but it’s worse than usual right now, so I would keep my distance if I were you — unless you want to be _dusted_. No idea what’s pissed him off so much, but he’s been completely nuts these days.” As he finished the sentence, his left eye glowed red and blue, creating a wild contrast, and a predatory grin graced his face, as if he was showing with his very look that he knew insanity and knew it well.

“Why’d you warn him? I would’ve loved to see this bastard get his ass handed to him.” Horror frowned, looking angry and a tad upset, and ran a finger over the edge of his axe in a vengeful manner. Ink smiled and, choosing to pull a fast one on them, took out the keys and threw them to the startled Killer.

“If you wanna see something like that, you friend here has everything taped,” he clarified with a sly grin, bringing everyone’s attention to the camera.

They turned to Killer and, apparently, only then realized that he was filming them. A moment later the two monsters, who were ready to snap each other’s necks a few minutes ago, headed over to beat up the third one together.

Thinking that getting involved further wasn’t worth it, the guardian left them to settle things among themselves, secretly letting out a breath he’d been holding. Staying in the company of three of the most insane people in the Multiverse without showing his discomfort wasn’t an easy task. But this time he’d managed to stifle his urges, which was encouraging. Yet he did have to wonder whether fighting broke out often here. How did they even get along in a place as grim as this? It wasn’t really his business, but… Ink had never considered it before.

Despite being so insistent about offering his friendship to Error — ready to forgive him for even worse deeds — he never took any interest in the fates of anyone else. But, in essence, these monsters weren’t to blame for ending up the way they were. Sci’s words came to him unbidden. The scientist was right: all of the Sanses were insane in some way. These ones were just a little more insane than most — and that happened because of the stories and worlds the Creators had come up with for them. So it was no wonder they’d tried to escape from their own universes. Escape… Just like he did… The artist shook his head, throwing away the unbidden thoughts. He could ponder this later — but definitely not now. He couldn’t have Nightmare picking up on his distress. Speaking of Nightmare, Dust said he was in his study, right?

The study… The only thing Ink thought he could remember was it being on the second floor. Asking any of the murderers for directions would raise suspicion, and calling Error about something so miniscule… He’d heard enough of him swearing already. Sighing, the guardian walked up the spiral staircase, examined the hallway before him and headed in the direction where the negative aura he felt was the strongest. Yeah, right now he could sympathize with Dream like never before — it was no surprise dark worlds and his brother’s presence made his friend shudder.

Once he stopped in front of, supposedly, the door he needed, he spent a couple of minutes thinking what would be more in character for the destroyer yet also fitting for the current situation — knocking on the door or kicking it open? In the end, unable to make the final choice, he decided to do both. Ink hit the wooden door roughly a couple of times for decorum, walked into the room without waiting for permission and immediately had to duck, dodging a tentacle.

He’d already noticed that the glitch’s body responded slower than his own, but the reflexes were sharp enough — and more precise even, since with such a sorry eyesight one had to rely on instincts a lot. Instantly assessing the situation, he summoned a bone and used it to bat the next strike away, lunged forward and cut off the slimy appendage with that same bone. Luckily, his close combat skills never let him down even when he didn’t have his brush at his disposal.

Holding the red bone in front of himself, the artist stared at Nightmare in wait, ready to counter more attacks, but the assault stopped as quickly as it had started. It wasn’t clear whether he was found out or this was a normal greeting among the Bad Guys, and that left him a bit nervous. But, upon seeing who’d come to visit him, Nightmare let his features relax, though just a moment ago he had probably been just as surprised as Ink was.

“I thought I hadn’t made it clear enough to those idiots that I’m not to be bothered. But I didn’t expect to see you,” he said in a way of explanation, but it didn’t sound like an apology. “I see you haven’t lost your skills while on that little vacation of yours. Where have you been?”

“What I do is none of your business.” The guardian kept his answer purposefully rude, even though he barely had to pretend — after all, the leader of the bad guys got not sympathy from him. And he was in no hurry to desummon the bone.

But that’s when Nightmare’s voice softened a little — if that could at all be said about it — and instead of annoyance and ever-present anger, it showed a hint of jest.

“I was just wondering where you’d gotten so much negativity from. Sure, you’re rarely happy with your life, but such a concoction… This is the first time I’ve ever sensed something like this, especially coming from you. Though… No, that’s a lie. This is the _second_ time. So this time you’ve decided not to resist and grant me a feast?”

He grinned mockingly and squinted with his only eye, but Ink froze at those words. A myriad of questions rose in his head, adding to the ones he already wanted to ask, but for now he needed to focus on more important matters — like not giving himself away more than he’d already done.

“ **Fat chance,** ” the artist hissed scornfully, hoping the tone of his voice and his choice of words would be enough to make the octopus rethink pursuing this subject further.

Error clearly didn’t like people getting into his head, which was already obvious by the way he treated Dream. So it was doubtful he liked that aspect of Nightmare any better, and it was just as doubtful that Nightmare hadn’t known about it. The monster in question did nothing to hide his unpleasant smirk, but actually held back from commenting further — which gave the artist a bit of a respite.

He’d known from the very beginning, that Night would sense everything, so he’d had the time to prepare for it — if only a little. Yes, his emotions were a mess, but, in essence, the only priority was to conceal the reasons for the state he was in. Well, that — and to keep his cool and his face in front of the other. Ink was mostly concerned about the latter, but, to his surprise, he felt a lot… calmer now, than he did when he’d first come to this universe. Sure, Nightmare was the epicenter of all the negativity in this place, but at the same time, unlike his brother, he absorbed it instead of spreading it.

According to the dreamer’s stories, that was actually his original duty as the guardian of the negative emotions. While Dream brought happiness to everyone, Nightmare, despite his not-so-positive name, didn’t send people any nightmares — instead he absorbed them, absorbed others’ troubles and calmed them while also figuring out reasons behind those negative emotions. But people didn’t understand that, didn’t come to him for help — and started to hate him instead. But even after changing into his current form, Nightmare hadn’t lost his abilities, using them to his advantage: this way he could both nourish himself and keep his subordinates from snapping — more than they usually did, at least.

It was a strange thing to admit, but right now the artist was sort of grateful for it, since were he overcome by fear because of this whole ordeal, it would’ve been way harder for him to keep his pretense. But, of course, he didn’t say that out loud. Instead he chose not to waste any more time and get down to business. He really didn’t want to stick around Nightmare for long, considering the other was capable of reading his uncontrollable emotions.

“I’ve got some questions. And you’d better have some answers,” he voiced the reason for his visit in a demanding and almost threatening tone. “You did feel something happen to the Multiverse two weeks ago, didn’t you?”

Nightmare instantly frowned, thinking something over. It seemed like the guardian hit _bullseye_ , and, what’s more peculiar, it seemed like he wasn’t the only one worried about what’d happened. Finally, Nightmare gave him a barely noticeable nod.

“Yes, that happened. It was somewhat similar to an earthquake — only those were the magical borders between the worlds that were shaking. It’s the first time I’ve ever experienced anything like it. And, it seems, you’ve disappeared right after that happened.” His expression was getting darker and darker, and he didn’t take his expectant gaze off the artist. Ink was quick to disappoint him.

“If you think I know what’s caused that anomaly, then you’re out of luck. I’m stuck trying to figure it out myself. That damned error did something to my Anti-Void.” What? It wasn’t even a lie!

The octopus, apparently, wasn’t satisfied with that answer; the tentacles behind his back tensed and whipped the floor a couple of times. The monster himself, however, did his best to keep his cool.

“I see. That’s why I haven’t been able to find you.”

“You were looking for me? I thought I come to you and not the other way around.” The guardian frowned, remembering whatever Error had told him about the relationship he shared with this slimeball. If he had been telling the truth, then Night wouldn’t have tried to bother the glitch — it wasn’t worth it. And it was unlikely he was worried about the destroyer.

“After that quake, opening portals came to be challenging, which messed with my plans tremendously,” Nightmare clarified, not bothering to conceal the anger in his voice. “Without the freedom of travel, I had nowhere to get negativity from — and I need negativity to travel. It’s a vicious circle, which almost resulted in us being stuck here.” The tentacles moved again, revealing all of the pent up annoyance. Thrown off balance by the revelation for a moment, Ink couldn’t hide his surprise.

“What?... Wait, you’re serious? My portals work just fine.”

Just to check, he concentrated and opened a few small tears into the first few universes he came across. Since there was no need to search for the coordinates, it didn’t take much time. Upon seeing that, Nightmare instantly went quiet and then grinned menacingly — the closest thing to a smile he could manage.

“It seems I’m very lucky to have you back.”

“You want me to lead you through?” The artist squinted, closing the portals with a wave of his hand and hastily trying to come up with a way out of this predicament.

Nightmare being trapped in his own dimension and unable to get in their way or attack anyone was wonderful news. But refusing to let him out would raise suspicion. However… the destroyer rarely agreed to compromise, and Ink could use that to his advantage right now. He crossed his arms, staring at Nightmare with displeasure in his eyes.

“I’m not a Multiversal taxi. And right now I have better things to do — like figuring out who was bold enough to barge into my space so that I can grind them to dust. Give me one good reason to waste my time on you.”

Night wasn’t surprised by the bold tone in the slightest — only cringed a bit. Apparently, the guardian guessed right, and many of the conversations between the two biggest troublemakers in the Multiverse went exactly this way. However, the other was undeterred.

“I’m not the only one who has trouble travelling. As far as I know, my brother has a similar problem. But that idiot still spent all of his powers on a trip around the Multiverse, looking for something — or, more precisely, some _one_. “ He paused for a moment before adding, “Ink is gone as well.”

Hearing something like that, while you’re standing just a few feet away, was odd, and the artist flinched in response to his own name. Nightmare, however, interpreted the reaction differently, thinking he’d managed to get the other’s attention. After all, he knew, that the guardian of the Multiverse was the only person Error took seriously — just like Nightmare himself had a score to settle with his brother. Smirking at his own thoughts, he leisurely went on.

“And that means that the star team is weaker than ever right now. If we strike fast, they wouldn’t be able to do a thing, and we’ll be rid of them once and for all. And then nothing would be able to get in the way, yours or mine.”

Ink tensed. There was logic to these words, and it seemed like he’d have to agree. But, come to think of it, it wasn’t quite so dismal. Firstly, he would know all of their plans and would be able to warn his friends, which meant this situation wasn’t hopeless. Secondly, he could sabotage the attacks himself. And thirdly, if Nightmare needed a favor, he stood to gain something out of it as well. He spent a couple of minutes thinking of a reply fitting of Error, and fairly soon he came up with a solution.

“If the ink stain isn’t around, then I can’t be bothered to care.” The artist dismissed Nightmare with an air of discontent and paused for a moment — calling himself by the nickname was as odd as hearing his own voice utter those mocking remarks had been. Still, he was quick to pull himself together. “But it seems like the quake — whatever it was — screwed you over as well. You want your portals working again, and I want to get rid of the anomaly. If you put your tentacles to searching for the cause, I’m in.”

“Deal.”

Night nodded and returned to his desk, carelessly swept the mess off the top and set to pouring over his papers, apparently, already busy planning when, where and how the next battle was going to go down. Unlike Error, who picked the next AU to destroy almost at random and played it by ear, the boss of the bad guys wasn’t just a leader — he was also a skilled strategist. He valued discipline and organization, and never attacked without planning ahead — which was a not-so-pleasant addition to his powerful magic and made him into a very dangerous opponent.

But here and now Ink witnessed a truly unusual sight — one of the almost peaceful lord of nightmares. And he could state with certainty, that it was the first time he’d ever seen the other like that. No, Nightmare wasn’t relaxed by any means — he simply wouldn’t allow himself that, especially not in front of the destroyer. But there was none of the recent annoyance or of the battle rage that Ink was so used to seeing. It felt as if the aura of negativity toned down a bit, and, despite the ever-present scowl, Nightmare’s treacherous smirk showed that this conversation had lifted his spirits somewhat.

Though it was still hard to tell whether he suspected something or not. Both of the twins — among their many skills — had the ability to tell when people were lying based on their emotions, and the artist wasn’t sure he was able to trick him. Still, even if Nightmare knew that the guardian had a different agenda, he probably wouldn’t have been surprised, since Error always helped the gang only for his own benefit.

Realizing he had nothing else to do here, Ink slowly left the study, figuring he’d take a walk around the castle and find a quiet place to consider his further actions. The few minutes spent in Nightmare’s company drained some of the negative emotions out of him, leaving an odd emptiness behind, and the castle didn’t seem quite as dark and gloomy anymore. He’d never noticed this side to the other’s abilities before, but right now they served him well. Even though the thought of knowingly fueling Nightmare’s strength was unpleasant on its own, he doubted his input would be enough to affect the balance of powers — the dark twin would need the suffering of a whole universe for that to happen. So, technically, no one was getting hurt.

Slamming the door shut and taking a few steps further down the hallway, he closed his eyes and focused on a blue string — and immediately cringed at the unpleasant sticky feeling of slime. But it seemed like Nightmare hadn’t noticed a thing. Or, perhaps, he only pretended not to notice? Only time would tell. But if he understood the workings of this magic right and everything went according to plan, then, at the very least, he’d be able to track Nightmare’s moves, which could come in handy, all things considered.

But even more important was what he’d discovered. So Nightmare couldn’t open portals? Or, rather, he could, but didn’t want to waste his powers on them without a clear plan in mind. Had something happened to the borders between dimensions, which made it impossible for the energy of positive and negative emotions to feed the twins like it had been doing before? Why hadn’t Dream told him about it? Yet he’d told him that Reaper and Fresh hadn’t been able to get into the Doodle Sphere, and, according to Sci, the quake affected the ones who were capable of travelling the Multiverse. And yet the glitch’s portals and travelling through ink — even though it was performed through summoning — bore no problems, as if this didn’t affect him and Error. Or did they have restrictions that they hadn’t discovered yet?

Yeah, he had a lot of things to consider. And it would’ve been nice to call Error and share everything he’d just found out, but doing so in such a hurry would raise suspicion, and for now it was best not to attract attention. So the artist sent a message to the destroyer and Sci, and quickly copied the same thing into the console for good measure. And although there was nothing else keeping him here, he decided that spying on the nightmares would come in handy, especially considering Nightmare was working on a plan of some sort.

With that in mind, the guardian came down to the first floor again. He found the three thugs in one of the rooms, sprawled on a couch. He noticed a few new scrapes on Killer — he must’ve gotten beaten up for that recording of his. Horror was sitting at one end of the couch, busy gnawing on a small piece of meat and throwing glances at Dust. Dust must’ve gotten the keys back at some point but, apparently, decided to have some mercy on the other. Well, that — or he decided to bribe Horror into leaving him alone for a while. Now he simply rested against the back of the couch and grinned at the ceiling.

All three of them looked bored. Did they really have nothing to do around here besides fighting? That couldn’t be right. The artist’s eyes wandered around the room, and the question he’d previously dismissed — just how did they get along in here? — rose up again. Welp, he had some time on his hands and an opportunity to satisfy his curiosity.


	7. A Tiny Exception

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to [Neutralcybertrn](https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn) for beta-reading this chapter!

****Error realized a long time ago that Underswap was a peculiar universe. Peculiar for multiple reasons, but all of them could be traced back to one entity. To a certain skeleton, to be precise. To Blueberry — or, simply, Blue. To the tiny — but most certainly Magnificent — Sans, who got stuck in the dealings of the Multiverse up to his non-existent ears — and would’ve been outraged over all the puns, were the aforementioned ears brought up. The poor guy was one of the few unlucky Sanses, who didn’t share their common sense of humor. But that wasn’t the only thing setting him apart from the others. His was quite a curious story — one that the destroyer came to ponder over way too often.

Where did the oddities start? Perhaps, with the fact that Swap worlds — along with Fell worlds — were the biggest clusters of universes, that brought together the multitude of AUs with two common ideas which — for whatever reason — happened to be very popular with the Creators. Mirrored personalities and violence, to be precise. Even other, seemingly unrelated universes often had certain timelines that were altered in that manner. And that’s why those two clusters were very hard to destroy: no matter how many times Error erased them, the overarching idea lived on and restored the worlds even without Ink’s involvement. So the glitch was quick to leave them alone, opting to save them for last — to deal with them once the Creators eased up somewhat. Otherwise this would all just be a colossal waste of time.

Besides, these were essentially some of the earliest AUs to be created, so they were situated very close to the center of the Multiverse. And the core Underswap timeline — Blue’s home — was adjacent to Dreamtale — and with good reason. Once formed and integrated into the Multiverse, Dreamtale sort of pulled this world towards itself — all thanks to Blueberry. Since he was the basis for Dream and Nightmare’s bodies, the kid unknowingly became the link between the two universes.

Error came upon this peculiar detail by chance when digging through his code. And, truth be told, it was just a coincidence that it was this very Blue that he decided to kidnap later on. But was it really a coincidence? That’s a good question, since the oddities didn’t end there. For some unfathomable reason this Sans kept attracting anomalies, which lead him to become not just an abomination — of which there were thousands all over the Multiverse — but something… more.

And the glitch himself played a big part in it. He couldn’t remember why he’d decided to abandon the kid in the Anti-Void. It was a split-second decision made in a fit of anger — he often had those back then. But instead of mentally crushing the prisoner, Error’s home dimension changed Blueberry, took him in and, unexpectedly for the destroyer, made him a part of itself. Error only realized his mistake when it was too late to make things right.

But just when the glitch thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Magnificent Sans — as he called himself — had a new addition to his list of achievements: he became close friends with none other than the two mightiest defenders of the Multiverse. Ink and Dream often came to visit him after the kidnapping incident to make sure he was okay — and they had a reason to worry, since Blue was the one and only person the destroyer had not only left alive but also returned back unharmed. And he stayed quiet when asked about it, which only served to confuse them more. But over time their wonder abated, and genuine affection for Blueberry took its place. Blue, in turn, took to the idea of protecting the other worlds with sudden enthusiasm.

By some miracle, Blue managed to talk the benign guardians into taking him in. Though what the destroyer found much more astonishing was that he’d managed to talk his brother into it — as in, the person known nearly all over the Multiverse for his overbearing care, bordering on a brother complex. But in the end — with the use of arguing, persuasion and a special attack in the form of puppy-dog eyes — Blue created a club, christening their now-trio the Star Sanses.

All three of them really did have stars in their eyes though. Another coincidence? Error had no idea. But that lack of knowing kept him intrigued — and he generally wasn’t one to question anything, preferring to erase everything indiscriminately. But even he had exceptions. Sure, he was going to destroy them… eventually.

And he was heading towards the house of one such small blue and restless exception right now.

The pacifist timeline that the taco-lover lived in was one of the most positive parts of the Multiverse, giving sustenance to Dream and Dreamtale itself, which, as stated, this timeline was linked to. However, the guardians probably didn’t know about it, just like they had no idea why the dreamer was drawn to Blueberry so. Dream blamed it on the kid’s bright aura of positivity, which was just as strong as his own — though Error suspected that the connection could be responsible for that as well.

Either way, it’s the Swap’s house that was the agreed upon base of operations of their gang and the place where they often assembled. Here they didn’t have to worry about Nightmare, since he gave that universe a wide berth — and even if he wished to invade it, this dimension had about as many locks on it as the Doodle Sphere, the Anti-Void or Haventale — which was a clear indication of just how much this world meant to them. Plus, while no one was looking, the destroyer himself added a couple of protective codes to it. Sure, Underswap was an error, but it was _his_ error.

Finally, after trudging through the snow poffs and the overbearing kindness of the locals, Error got to his destination. As he was standing on the doorstep and thinking of what to say to the ink stain’s friends and how to say it, he had a timely recollection of the temper the local Papyrus possessed — Blue as well; the kid was quite capable of feeding him soap-filled tacos — and threw all the swears into the deepest corner of his mind in advance. Besides, swearing definitely didn’t suit the rainbow bastard’s character, and right now, no matter how much the very idea bugged the glitch, he needed to act like him. Oh, this was going to be one heck of a challenge…

He knocked on the door a couple of times and heard fairly heavy footsteps approaching from the other side. Strangely enough, the person who opened the door wasn’t Blue or Dream — not even Papyrus. With an annoyed growl of “Just who the heck is it?” Red appeared in the doorway, his snarl showing off the glint of the sharp gold tooth. Dammit, he’d forgotten all about the abomination number thirteen! The person in question looked the guest over, huffed in understanding, stepped aside, letting him in, and yelled into the depths of the house:

“Hey, your paint bucket’s here!”

The “paint bucket” choked out a laugh and made sure to remember the expression — he’d use it later for sure. Ever since the guest from the Fell-universe was taught not to swear — using soap and bones as incentive — he got so creative that, even if Fresh happened to be around, he could still bury anyone in curses up to their ears — whether those existed or not.

But before the glitch could even step into the living room, he already regretted coming here: Blue pounced on him, squealing. It took all of his self-control to stop himself from screaming along with the kid. Sure, the touches didn’t leave a burning sensation anymore, but that didn’t mean his phobia was gone, and no amounts of yellow paint could suppress it.

Alerted by the noise, Dream came running out of the kitchen and too ended up wrapped around the destroyer, while the glitch mentally prepared his last will and testament, surprised he hadn’t thrown up ink yet. Luckily, the sunny guardian noticed something was wrong and hurried to let him out of his embrace.

“Oh my god, Ink. I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“He? Okay? Ha!” Fell butted in, slamming the door shut now that the glitch was inside. “Your hugs aren’t just suffocating, they’re bone-mangling and neck-breaking. You’ve spent two weeks whining how you had no idea whether he’s alive, and now you’re about to settle this question. And the answer’s gonna be inky and splattered all over the floor.” He grinned, earning himself a glare from Blue.

“Red!”

“What? Am I wrong?” He nodded towards the victim of their greeting.

Worried, Blue gave Error a once-over and let him go as well, giving him a chance to catch his breath.

Did Error call it a challenge? Oh no. “Torture” described this nightmare much better. And, to tell the truth, he would’ve gladly gone to interrogate Nightmare, but instead… No, seriously, just what had he done to deserve all of _this_? Sighing heavily, he looked at everyone present one more time and did his best to crack a smile.

“It’s fine, it’s just… It was far too sudden.”

“Sorry! We’re just so happy to see you. You’ve given us such a scare! If you only knew how worried we were!”

The tiny Sans barely held back from giving him another hug, taking his hand in a firm grip instead and dragging him into the kitchen, where his cooking session was in full swing. And before the destroyer could get over the unbidden touching and wrap his head around his current predicament, he was already sitting at the table, a pile of sugary treats in front of him. Meanwhile Blue mumbled something about his “Special Super Awesome Tacos”, which he cooked in celebration of the other’s return. Instead of joining the fun, Red chose to sit down on a side of the couch, a bottle of mustard in hand. He did his best to pretend he didn’t care about any of it, though sometimes he still glanced towards the kitchen.

“What will you be having?”

“Huh?...” Error still didn’t quite understand what was going on, but the dreamer didn’t pay his confusion no mind. He was used to Ink getting distracted and forgetting the questions he’d just been asked.

“What do you want to drink? Tea, coffee, hot chocolate?”

“Hot chocolate,” the destroyer answered without thinking, and a minute later Dream handed him a mug full of the steaming beverage.

“Topped with marshmallows, just the way you like it,” he smiled warmly and sat onto the nearest chair.

“Yeah… T-thanks.” Error nodded and stared at the white lumps that were floating on the surface of the drink. Marshmallows? Yeah, he thought he could recall it being the guardian’s favorite candy. Though he couldn’t remember just when and where he’d found out about it. But, hey, it’s not like he was going to complain about it.

They spent about an hour just sitting there, slowly munching on cookies, pointedly ignoring the tacos and half-listening to Blue’s ramblings. The kid was set on describing everything that had happened to them over the past two weeks in utmost detail, retelling everything almost word for word. The story held no huge revelations, just the things Error had already known. Though the fact that Blueberry felt the Multiverse shake as well had him a little tense, but the destroyer had a hunch what the reason behind that was. Also, it turned out that Dream was so engrossed in his search for the guardian that the keeper of dreams had to be practically forced to get some sleep. So he’d basically been living here for most of this time. Red wasn’t too happy about it and even butted into Blue’s story with a few unflattering comments.

“There. And then you gave us a call!” he summed up the story, beaming.

“Sorry for making you worry,” the glitch replied awkwardly, looking down at his mug. The hot chocolate turned out to be quite tasty, and he decided to try nabbing it along with Red’s chocolate in the future.

To tell the truth, the ambiance of the place unnerved him. It was too peaceful, too homey, too friendly… so strange. Error liked being alone, and even when he socialized, it never happened _like this_. Which left him overwhelmed and expecting a catch, which he knew wouldn’t come. And at the same time he realized with utmost clarity that none of this kindness and care were meant for him. And there came that feeling again. Subconsciously, he wanted to feel a stronger emotion, but… which one? He had no idea. Damn that artist and his worthless paints!

He got distracted by his phone vibrating, and, once the dreamer turned away to help Blue with the dishes, he quickly read the incoming message and frowned.

“Dream?”

“Yeah?” The guardian of emotions perked up, focusing his eyes on the destroyer. So far Error had been sitting quietly and only answered some of the questions, since the current situation had him a bit out of it — and he was also wary of letting something slip.

But Dream wasn’t aware of any of it, and his “friend’s” behavior left him worried. He could see the other was preoccupied with something, but he couldn’t tell what it was — the paints weren’t quite the same as real emotions, so he never knew what was going on in Ink’s head, unless the artist drank from the vials right in front of him. And even the years of knowing Ink couldn’t fully replace what his ability of reading emotions could give him.

But, strangely enough, that’s what he valued so much about their relationship. It’s only with Ink — the most fake being he knew — that he had formed a true friendship — the way friendship was supposed to be. At least, that’s how he saw it. It just so happened that normal beings couldn’t easily tell what others were feeling or change others’ emotions by just staying near. They had to guess, understand and gradually learn about each other, build up real relationship in the form that wasn’t available to Dream. But neither his aura, not his abilities affected Ink, and the artist barely ever saw any dreams. He was physically incapable of taking advantage of the dreamer, and that really meant a lot to Dream.

Besides, Dream suffered from a partial lack of feelings himself. Strong negative emotions like rage, despair or hate were alien to him. He didn’t consider it a good thing, however, since he couldn’t fully understand them. And after meeting someone who couldn’t feel at all, for the very first time in his life he felt like he’d found a soul mate — in a person who didn’t have a soul, no less. Though Dream wasn’t much better in that respect. Two people with similar problems and similar passion for protecting the Multiverse — they quickly saw eye to eye and, for the very first time, were able to really put their trust in and open up to someone.

So Dream was worried sick when his dear friend disappeared, and even now, when the other was back, he just couldn’t sit still. Sure, the artist frequently dropped out of conversations when he lost the train of thought and forgot what they were talking about, but even with that in mind he still seemed way too quiet to Dream. And whatever had happened, he was ready to do anything to help him.

“Tell me, can you still create portals?” Error asked with a hint of suspicion in his voice, choosing to start from afar and avoid any direct questions. Sure, Ink told him that the dreamer couldn’t sense him, but he wasn’t so sure of it himself, so he played it safe.

“I… Yes. Of course I can.” Dream tensed, and his expression got the tiniest bit darker. That wasn’t a question he expected.

“But it doesn’t come easy, right?”

“How did you…?” He looked up in surprise, but instantly cut himself off, seeing an hourglass and a four-point star in the other’s eyes.

Sure, Dream couldn’t sense Ink’s emotions, but he was familiar with the symbol combinations. Although they weren’t quite as accurate, he could tell that the artist was currently thoughtful and, also, firmly set on something — on getting the answers, most likely. The dreamer sighed and nodded. No, it wasn’t like he wanted to conceal anything, but this issue was quite worrisome, and he wasn’t sure whether to dump all of his concerns on his friend, since the other hadn’t even regained his bearings properly yet.

“Why didn’t you say so over the phone?” The destroyer tried to make himself sound worried, and he even seemed to succeed, since this issue actually did worry him — though it annoyed him more. However, he was unable to become angry, which was surely for the best right now.

“I didn’t want to make you worry even more. And I was very emotional at the time. You need to understand, Ink, that I spent two weeks thinking you were _gone_. I kept thinking the worst had happened. And, trust me, this was no better than the time I…” Dream shuddered and went silent for a while, turning to look at Blue, who persevered in his task of destroying the dishes in the sink. Then he actually finished what he started to say — or, rather, whispered it so quietly that no one would hear it besides the two of them, and even then Error had to strain his hearing:

“ _The time I saw you die for the first time._ ”

He sighed again and leaned back in the chair, looking away and showing with his very being that he wasn’t about to elaborate. Then he continued in his normal voice, “So, when you called, the weird issues of my magic were the last thing on my mind.”

For a moment Error was stunned. “For the first time”? What?! And what did he mean by “saw”? He’d killed the ink stain before, but the dreamer was nowhere near there, so he couldn’t have seen it. So… what? It had happened before? The emptiness inside him fussed unpleasantly, but he held back the rising questions — he had other matters to discuss right now, and they took precedence.

“Again, I’m sorry.” He tried to smile, and, although the expression came out looking as fake as ever, Dream was unperturbed and smiled weakly in response. However, the glitch didn’t come here to apologize to his enemies over and over, so a moment later he was back to discussing the more pressing issue. “But you do realize it’s important? Can you describe what’s happened to your powers?” he asked firmly, though tried not to sound too harsh.

Giving his voice the correct inflection took some effort, but the end result sounded almost like the ink stain’s usual intonation — the one the guardian always used when offering him a hand of friendship: a mixture of the stubbornness of a mule and the sugary-sweet amiability of a True-Pacifist-bound Frisk. This was probably the tone the destroyer hated the most. Yet it was painfully familiar. The glitch heard it so often that imitating it took almost no effort. It was way harder to make himself voice it.

The need to use alien wording and act like Mr. Politeness — especially in front of the Star Sanses — was a blow to everything starting with his pride and ending with his self-respect — and it annihilated both. Error wasn’t one for concessions and took any necessity-driven compromise very hard. But so far this day had been nothing but concessions and compromises, and, to be honest, he couldn’t remember a time he’d been more humiliated. Though… there _was_ a time… But even _that_ was nothing compared to the truth being revealed. And the glitch knew that well, so he kept himself in check somehow. Though, while he normally would’ve lost his cool by now, the lack of red paint consistently kept him from snapping. He must’ve made the right choice when he lowered the dosage of that paint. He needed to stay in control more than ever right now.

Dream spent a few minutes pondering — leaned onto the table and interwove his fingers as he collected his thoughts — and then, finally, he answered:

“How do I describe it?… I’m not even sure. It seems to me that something must’ve happened to the boundaries between the worlds. Before all of this happened they used to let the energy pass through them freely. Only universes with restricted access have a closed-circuit flow of energy, which is why they are harder to sense and find.

“But now it feels as if all of the worlds are restricted, and even though I can still sense them, that connection is way weaker. That’s where the problem with teleportation comes from. Right now I can only clearly and fully sense the energy of the AU I currently reside in, and should I enter a negative universe, I won’t be able to absorb enough positivity for the next jump.”

“And you still traveled around the Multiverse, searching for me?” the destroyer asked with a hint of disbelief, making a mental estimation of the number of negative worlds — he knew they were in the majority by default.

“Core Frisk helped me out a lot. They didn’t face the same problem, but their powers were weakened as well. Which, by the way, is just as strange. When I asked them about it, they said that they feel ‘split’. I mean, they _are_ scattered over time and space, they exist in all of the worlds simultaneously as something unified and whole. But now these very worlds are kind of separated from each other, as if something went and broke all the connections between them.” The more he spoke, the darker his expression got. He looked more serious and focused than ever.

The glitch was a bit surprised even: he was used to seeing Dream act more… positive? Hey, come to think of it… They were sitting just a few feet away from each other, but he couldn’t feel the exuberant positivity, even though Dream’s aura was one of those things he couldn’t have ever mistaken for something else. Did that mean that Ink had been telling the truth and this aura didn’t affect him? Huh. Error couldn’t tell whether it was for better or worse right now.

Meanwhile the sunny guardian lightened up a little:

“But even so they still agreed to help me check inside the dark worlds. I took it upon myself to go through the light ones — besides, I frequently returned here to recharge. It was hard. But the search amounted to nothing. And now you’re back, so…” He had a faint smile on his face, but it was hard to tell what he was feeling right now. Sure, he was happy to see his “friend”, but he was clearly upset about being unable to help him any.

The destroyer considered what he’d just heard. Now _this_ could count as useful intel. “Yes, that really _is_ weird. And what about Reaper and Fresh? Did they mention something like that?”

“Not that I know of — unless you count them being unable to break into your place — but I didn’t ask. They’re much stronger than I am when it comes to teleportation. But they could be experiencing difficulties as well.” The dreamer nodded in agreement, aware what the other was implying.

“I suspect that currently no one can travel as they usually did. No one, except… Oh, dammit…” Error cut himself off. Well, there went his idea of using Dream as the source of portals. Now only one option remained. The paint. Which he’d already come to hate.

“Is something wrong?” Dream asked, worried, as he noticed the change in his “friend’s” expression.

“It’s nothing. It’s just that I’m not happy about what I’m about to say, but I think we should seek them out and interrogate them. I feel more and more certain that I’m not the only one affected by whatever had happened. Something big happened to the Multiverse, and I don’t like it.” The destroyer quickly found a way to re-route his dissatisfaction to avoid suspicion.

That’s the thing: If you want to tell a good lie, tell the truth. This one in particular came out sounding quite natural, since he actually despised both of those characters, and he wasn’t even sure, which one of them was more loathsome. They both liked to come into the Anti-Void as if they owned the place, they both liked to annoy him with touches — even though they knew damn well he couldn’t stand it — and, to the glitch’s utter dismay, they both stubbornly refused to die. And kill them he tried. Besides, the existence of a new stinking error in the Multiverse didn’t make him any happier either.

“I get it. It won’t be easy to find them. Usually they come on their own. But I’ll reach out to Core Frisk: they see everything.

“Hm… Since it’s come to that, who else do we know who travels around? The most active travellers are probably Seraphim, Goopy… Oh, right, Cross too.” The moment the guardian of dreams mentioned the swordsman, his smile turned a lot more genuine, and he blushed a little.

Error let out a barely noticeable huff. That split guy didn’t interest him much. He could remember stealing his soul to keep as a trophy, but the guy somehow managed to exist without it. Damn anomaly. One of the many, actually. That X-Event messed things up big time, and, come to think of it, Ink acted very weirdly back then.

But it didn’t matter now. What’s important was that the stupid, Creator-induced truce was put to an end — to Error’s utter delight. The stupid rules, the ban on destruction… Sheesh! But, thanks to Cross, everything went back to normal, which was why Error let him be. His whole universe was destroyed even without the glitch’s involvement anyway.

However, the monochrome guy himself wasn’t able to let it go, joined Nightmare and spent some time bringing more chaos into the Multiverse. And although his magic was similar to the destroyer’s powers — as it affected the code too — he used it crudely and clumsily, leaving behind a whole bunch of holes and traces. What an amateur!

But even so he’d left twenty five worlds severely damaged before coming across Dream again. And that’s when the dreamer did that thing which he excelled at and which made Error so wary of him — meaning, he got into the poor guy’s soul. And stayed firmly planted there.

What followed — just like in a B-movie — were betrayal, acknowledgement of feelings, escape, elopement, Nightmare’s attempts to bring Cross back to his side — and, really, from an outside perspective it looked very much like a weird love triangle situation. Error thought he could recall there being that huge battle for Haventale too… Basically, this whole story had more twists and turns than Undernovela, and Error stayed well away from it but watched it from the corner of his eye. And once the dust settled, Cross went off the grid, and the destroyer almost forgot all about him, since the guy followed Dream around, and the conflicts of the apple brothers mostly passed him by.

“Cross… I think Blue has mentioned him helping you in your search. He can only open portals into the universes he’s already been to, right?” he clarified, sounding indifferent and trying hard to avoid looking at the dreamer, who clearly had his head in the clouds.

“Yes. He travels through code, but he’s not very knowledgeable about it, since it’s not an inborn ability of his. Though, even if he’d faced some problems, he never told me about it. But that’s just like him. I’m sure he simply doesn’t want to worry me more.” Dream wilted somewhat, turning his eyes away in embarrassment, but Error paid it no mind, buried deep in his thoughts.

He understood code way better than Cross, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to apply this knowledge without the ability to see it. And he doubted he’d be able to explain how the artist knew all of that. Basically, there was a problem at every turn.

He was about to ask another question when he was rudely interrupted.

“Hey, isn’t the dude aware that you can read him like an open book? Doesn’t make sense for him to hide something. He’ll just end up stressing himself out more, and then you’ll be stuck with his negativity. If he’s trying to keep you safe, he’s got a lousy way to do it.” Red suddenly reminded them of his existence, unable to pass the chance to gossip. It was more entertaining than listening to them ramble about portals anyway.

“I’ve… already spoken to him about it,” Dream replied awkwardly, blushing even harder. “But I’m at fault here as well. Unlike Ink, he _is_ affected by my powers. And sometimes I can’t even be sure if I feel his real emotions or what was forced on him by me. We’re both trying to protect each other, but…” The dreamer sighed heavily, clenching his fists nervously.

“God, why is _that_ a problem?” Sprawled over the couch, Fell grinned towards the kitchen, not sharing the other’s gloomy outlook. “That thing only works when you’re nearby. That’s why people got mad at you, remember? Like, you make them happy and then leave them, even though it’s not really up to you. Though, considering how much of a kick your aura packs, I’m not surprised they got addicted, the bunch of idiots…

“What I’m saying is, if you want honestly, just stay apart for a week or so and then check if your feelings are gone or not.” He focused his eyes on Dream, and his look even held a hint of seriousness in it for a moment.

“I… Yes, this should work.” The guardian of emotions gave him an uncertain nod in response. This idea really did make sense. But a moment later he got agitated again, throwing nervous glances around the room. “But I don’t want to leave him for too long! I want to make Cross happy. And… I’m a little bit scared. What if he gets angry like all of those people did? I don’t want to lose him.” He squeezed his eye sockets shut, his face quickly gaining on the same colour that his apple of a soul had.

“What a bunch of lovesick idiots. Nothing is going to change if you keep acting like cowards. And all of that ‘I’m not worthy of him’ and ‘I only make things worse’ stuff…” Red rolled his eyes, making it abundantly clear that he’d heard enough of that shit already. “Quit self-blaming and get a room already,” he snapped, his golden tooth glinting.

“R-red!” Dream panicked, turning to look at Blue, but the kid hummed under his breath, pretending not to hear anything over the noise of the running water.

Fell realized his blunder as well and occupied his own mouth with mustard, but the look he was giving Dream promised that, unless the two lovebirds got this whole thing settled soon, he’d kidnap them in the dark of the night and lock them up, naked, in a cramped room. The dreamer gulped; his face matched his circlet in colour.

Error facepalmed as he listened to all of that, wishing he was somewhere far away from here. How, just _how_ did this conversation devolve into discussing lovers’ dilemmas, dammit?! He had been keeping himself in check so far, but this was all sorts of wrong! He couldn’t take any more of this. The destroyer abruptly stood up, slamming his palms onto the tabletop and cutting the discussion short. Dream flinched and turned towards him.

“Ink?...”

“I… I need a break from all of this,” the destroyer ground out through clenched teeth.

Magenta and purple were the colours responsible for shame and disgust respectively, but instead, barely pushing down the wish to take a gulp of them, he fished out the blue paint from the sash. Luckily, this time his memory didn’t fail him, and, after a careful sip from the vial, he soon felt calm and indifferent towards their dialogue. Considering what a pandemonium he ended up in, it seemed like he’d have to use this paint quite often. Great.

“Oh! R-right.” The dreamer felt a pinch of guilt for making things awkward. After all, they were having a serious conversation and had a (presumably) massive problem on their hands — and there he went, ranting about his relationship problems. “Are you tired? Blue won’t mind you staying over.”

“Seriously? What is this, a hostel?!” Red considered this a good reason to butt in again, still grumbling something about indecisive softies and how no one bothered with that crap in his world.

“You do remember you’re a guest here as well?” Blue reentered the conversation, having finished doing the dishes, and smiled as if nothing had happened.

“Yeah, sure. Only I ended up sticking around for — y’know — a few years now. And I’ve seen an insane amount of people coming and going over the years. If you charged people for staying here, you could’ve already gotten yourself a cottage big enough to make Asgore jealous!”

“If you want to chip in, you’re welcome to do that at any moment. You’re just as lazy as Papy is, and those honey and mustard of yours aren’t free, you know. Muffet had it in her to forgive one moocher, but even she isn’t generous enough to handle the two of you,” Blueberry stated with a hint of reproach, standing with his hands akimbo. “And I already have my hands full with keeping the house, training for the guard and working as a guardian of the Multiverse!”

“Then drop one of those. Why do you insist on spreading yourself thin? You don’t get anything out of saving others’ hides, and those training sessions are a sham.” Red waved him off and kept the snark coming. “When will you realize that you won’t ever make it into the guard? Your brother won’t let you join. He’s obsessed with your safety. Remember how he kept lashing out at me when I just got here? Heh, back then I thought he and Boss weren’t so different: both of them are fully capable of beating me up so much that death seems a mercy by comparison.”

“It’s not Papy’s fault… He’s already lost me once,” Blue replied quietly, looking down at the floor.

However, for everyone present those words were more deafening than the most thunderous roar, and a moment later silence hung over the room, interrupted only by the rare water drops leaking from the faucet — which could be heard surprisingly well as they counted the seconds of the prolonged quiet. Even Red, who was always either smirking or annoyed at something, kept his mouth shut and froze in indecision, letting the mustard bottle out of his hands for the first time.

“Um… Dammit, Blue, I didn’t…” He was about to get up off the couch, but Blueberry came to his senses and smiled again.

“But everything’s alright, mweh-heh-heh! I’ve become much stronger since then, and I can take care of myself! And I’ve already talked him into letting me travel to other worlds. And the fights we face there are much tougher than my training sessions with Alphys. They can’t keep rejecting me forever.” He struck a confident pose, but even that couldn’t lift the tension that hung thick in the air.

Error too froze at the sudden reminder of the past — but for a very different reason. He didn’t pity the kid over what had happened to him — mostly because he knew what really had happened there. Which meant… His eyes were glued to Blue, as if he was a lifeline. He practically tore from his spot and got beside the kid in two steps.

“Blue, mind keeping me company? I wanted to get some fresh air. And I think both of us could use it,” the glitch offered — insisted — barely holding back from grabbing the tiny guardian by the scruff and dragging him outside, but his phobia was still fresh in his memory — just like the need to avoid suspicion.

“Huh? Sure,” the other nodded amenably, glad for a chance to get out of the awkwardness that filled the space.

The two left the house together and walked behind it, heading closer to the forest so that random passersby wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop. Error sighed in relief. All of this pretending would be the death of him. He wasn’t the only one pretending here though. And although he opposed letting anyone in on his situation, it was better than keeping the act up. Sure, he might have to reveal a few things, but this would make his life way easier.

“So… Was there something you wanted to talk about? If it’s because of what I’ve said, then I’m okay. Honest.” Blue stopped, looking at him with curiosity. Stars shone in his eyes. Right now he looked so childish. So innocent… But that wouldn’t last for long. The destroyer turned away and quietly voiced the wonderful words that would put an end to at least a half of his suffering.

“‘He still hasn’t called Chara. This story won’t have an ending.’”

Blueberry froze. The ever-bright smile instantly disappeared, freeing up space for a tense and lost kind of expression.

“I-Ink?... Where have you heard about it?” His voice traitorously cracked as he stepped back and gulped. The glitch smirked and tilted his head a little.

“Oh, the rainbow bastard has no idea. Though he _is_ asking questions.”

Silence hung over them. Blueberry spent a few minutes staring intensely into the mismatched eyelights, then asked the right question:

“You… Ink, is that you?”

“ _You’re wrong._ ” The destroyer grinned. “Or should I give you another hint?” He brought his hand up, and paint appeared on it, forming several semi-liquid strings. With a practiced motion, he pulled them taught those between his fingers, but soon let them dissolve.

Another bout of silence followed. The whole world seemed to stop — even the noises of the town died down, leaving them alone. The ever-lively and hyperactive Blue didn’t look anything like his normal self, suddenly growing serious and staring holes into his companion, as if he was hoping to see something in the depths of the other’s being, behind the appearance of the artist. And he must’ve seen it, whatever it was, as he sighed heavily and asked — without panicking like before and staying extremely focused:

“Is it really you? I mean… you know how that sounds.”

“Oh, believe me, I know.” Error cringed a bit. He could hardly believe it himself. “What, you need more proof? I could bring up a lot of your secrets, but I think this one will be enough: We watch Undernovela together every weekend.”

Blueberry perked up for a second, and the doubt that showed in his expression before was instantly gone. Their “movie nights” were a closely guarded secret, so this was more than enough as far as proof went. Which meant everything was fine, and Ink was still none the wiser. But that also meant… The following conclusion made Blueberry tense up again.

“Wait, but if you’re here… Then what’s happened to him?”

“Take a guess. You’re the clever berry here.” The glitch squinted slyly. Getting the kid involved was the right choice after all.

“Don’t call me that!” Blue crossed his arms and pouted childishly. All of his seriousness was gone as quickly as it appeared.

“Oh, right… That nickname’s already taken.” The destroyer cringed for a second, but his expression soon turned neutral again. Right now all of his reactions were muted — thanks to the blue paint, most likely — and the calm was proving to be pretty useful. He wanted to avoid any more incidents.

“You’ve promised!” Blueberry reminded. His frown deepened, but he only ended up looking cuter as a result.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll drop it.” The glitch shrugged it off, annoyed a little. Even if this subject wasn’t off-limits, he had no inclination to discuss it anyway — and it most certainly wasn’t the reason he brought Blue outside to talk.

In turn, Blueberry quickly returned to more pressing matters. He too tried to remain calm, but worry still lingered in his voice. “So, that means you two…”

“Say that out loud, and I’ll do something we’ll both regret,” Error warned icily.

Blueberry wasn’t perturbed though. “Let me rephrase that.” This sounded so habitual, as if he’d repeated the same phrase more than once in the past — or, perhaps, he even started his day with practicing it in front of a mirror? “Is he in the same state as you are? Is it because of the tremor?” Curiosity joined the inflections of his voice at the last question.

“We sent the scientist to go figure it out. But it sure seems so.” The glitch’s expression darkened, and he leaned on one of the fir trees. Just the thought of the artist wearing his body right now made him nauseous, so he tried not to think of it too much, but, considering his current predicament, ignoring it altogether was quite difficult.

“Where is he then?”

“I **have n** o idea.” He spread his arms wide and smirked lopsidedly, but instead of blowing up over yet another pun Blue suddenly paled.

“Haven… B-but that’s where!...” His eyelights shrank into tiny shaking pinpricks, and he shuddered, involuntarily taking another step back. “Will he be alright?” he asked, not bothering to conceal his unease.

“Oh, he’d better be.” The destroyer frowned, but the words that followed came out in a very weird tone — one uncharacteristic for him and almost positive. “But, hey, if there’s one thing the short stack has, it’s strength and tenacity — even I can admit that. Even I can’t always beat him. But still, considering the shit we’re in, I could use a safety net in case he decides to do something completely idiotic and becomes a pile of dust out there.” He gave Blue a serious and demanding stare, and the other nodded.

“I get it.”

“And I’m warning you — don’t use the strings for summoning. You can guess why. Only call me on my phone.” He took out the red, somewhat beat-up phone and put it back again right away. “And keep a lid on things, unless you’re one hundred percent sure who you’re talking to. Not a word to anyone else. Got it?” The glitch’s words sounded like orders and were clearly not to be challenged.

Blue stood at attention and nodded with a look similar to one he gained when giving a report to Alphys. “Yes. I’ll pass it along.”

“Good.” Error relaxed somewhat for the first time since coming here. This kind of arrangement would rid him of a few more problems. He tried to think what else he could get out of getting Blueberry involved, and that’s when he was struck with an idea. “Here’s a question for you. Do you still have the ‘key’?”

“Both of them.” Blueberry held out a hand, and magic stirred above it, manifesting two different but somewhat similar combinations. “But yours doesn’t work. And the other one works, but just barely. When he went missing, I thought you could have something to do with it, so I wanted to make sure but couldn’t get through,” he reported, brief and to the point. “You haven’t changed the lock, have you?”

“No, I had nothing to do with it this time. And that sucks…” The destroyer held his chin in his hand, thinking.

He hadn’t found out anything specific so far, but at least he had his suspicions confirmed. His Anti-Void was in the same state as the Doodle Sphere. He would’ve liked to learn more, but, until Dream got in touch with the others, that was all just wishful thinking. Until then he’d have to pretend to be the artist and stay on the down low. Of course, he could just claim to be exhausted and lock himself up in a room, away from prying eyes, and Blue would cover for him. But, speaking of the meeting…

Reaper could pose a problem. What if he recognized him? Ink and Error were out of Death’s jurisdiction, but the reaper still had access to their hourglasses — even though they didn’t run. And, besides, those hourglasses reflected not the monster’s soul, but their essence — their lives, in a way. And what if their current state showed in the state of those hourglasses? If so, Reaper would surely try to get involved. That bastard had no idea of personal space — that’s something the destroyer had found out a long time ago. And there was no guarantee that he would agree not to blow their cover. Error could still remember just what the reaper’s silence had cost him last time.

Okay, that was paranoia speaking. There was no guarantee that Death would recognize him. But either way they’d better handle things quietly. They’d already gotten way too many people involved.

Meanwhile, Blue stood there, silently watching the other’s eyelights change. After a few minutes had gone by, he dared to interrupt the glitch’s thoughts. “Hey… Um…”

“What is it?” Error belatedly jerked his head up, having almost forgotten the kid was still here.

“You said he’s been asking questions. And, considering the way things currently are…”

“...He could get into things that are none of his business. Especially if he figures out how to use the archive,” the destroyer concluded. His expression darkened. Yes, this could pose a problem as well, and it wasn’t a small issue either. “I’ll try to keep him from finding out, but no promises.”

“Yeah, me too. But you do know that I’ll tell him everything once he proves he trusts me. Including the stuff about you. And then… he’ll have to reconsider how he sees all of us.” Blue’s look was tense yet confident, and he kept staring at Error.

“Aren’t you scared?” the glitch asked, smirking — an expression of jest rather than mockery, as if they were discussing a very embarrassing secret. Which was pretty much what was going on.

“A little bit. Perhaps he’ll be disappointed in me. Or maybe he’ll be proud. That I don’t know.” The little guardian lowered his head sadly, gripping his blue bandanna and nervously fiddling with the edge of the fabric.

“Considering how long you’ve kept them fooled… Oh, I can just imagine their reactions. Especially your brother’s. I don’t think he’ll be too happy to know just how much his overactive little brother has changed.” The destroyer smirked slyly, but Blue remained calm and collected.

“I’ve changed a long time ago. I may be the second youngest Sans in the Multiverse — if you count Littletale — but, unlike him, I won’t remain a child forever. And if my brother really loves me, he’ll have to accept it. And if he won’t accept it, then he’ll have to live with it anyway. It’s my choice, and I’m ready to take full responsibility for it — or bear the pain if it doesn’t work out.”

Error watched him thoughtfully for a few minutes, then suddenly stepped closer. Weirdly enough, he and Blue were almost the same height right now — he was just an inch or two taller. Dream too was just as tall — which wasn’t really a surprise, considering Blue served as his prototype. Heh, what a team of short stacks. Smirking, he barely managed to fight down his phobia enough to hold out a hand and put it onto the younger skeleton’s head. The burning sensation he’d come to expect didn’t come, and he gave the kid a quick pat.

“In the end, whatever comes, you’ll survive. You’re strong, Blue — in every sense of the word. Even I had to admit it. So if he doesn’t get it, then your brother’s even more stupid than the ink stain,” he said confidently, his tone almost showing real warmth, and jerked his hand back. Physical contact never came easy to the destroyer, and, were the glitches still present, he would’ve never even considered doing this.

Bewildered, Blue froze, staring at him. “Don’t talk about Papy this way. But thanks! Wowie, this has to be the nicest thing I’ve ever heard from you! Mweh-heh-heh!” Stars lit up in his eyelights, and a genuine smile appeared on his face. Despite that, his worry still lingered, but it was aimed at the glitch now. “I’m not the only one this would affect though. I know for sure what he’d think of you. Once he knows the truth…”

“...He won’t ever leave me be. I know.”

“And what are you going to do about it? I mean… Do you want that to happen or?...”

“ _You’ve promised,_ ” Error growled, cutting Blue off. His eyelights turned red, and his voice grew icy. “Don’t forget your place, Blueberry. Your careless words could cost you two universes.”

The other gulped and nodded shakily. “I… do remember.”

“Great. That’s all I wanted to know so far.” He started to head back towards the house, but Blue looked up, as if he’d just remembered something, and hastily stepped to the side, getting in his way.

“Wait! I almost forgot. I’m sorry.”

“For what?...” the destroyer asked, confused.

“For the hug. I really didn’t know it was you.” Blue looked at him with a hint of sadness, but not dramatically so. There was no begging, no show of tears or panic — just simple and honest regret.

“Just don’t do that again, and I’ll try to forget about it,” Error replied, frowning, and was about to head back towards the house, but Blue didn’t budge.

“And one more thing…” He tensed again and seemed to have become even more serious and confident than before, but his tone wasn’t chilly — much the opposite, it was full of genuine warmth and care. “ _I remember the promise._ And right now I’m probably toeing the line, but… If it’s really you, then I can’t even imagine how you feel right now. So if… _if_ you want to talk about it, I’m right here. I’ve already told you this back when we first met, and I’ll say it again. I’m ready to follow you anywhere just so that you’d have someone to talk to. And I’ll always listen.” He paused, catching his breath, and smiled again. “Oh, and don’t worry about Dream, okay? I’ve got your back.”

Upon hearing such a heartfelt speech, Error frowned a bit and was about to respond with mockery, but a few memories surfaced in his mind, sudden and painful. And a few others… So warm… The emptiness in his chest fussed yet again, and he hesitantly touched the vials. What was this emotion — so familiar, so coveted, yet so fiercely rejected — that he wanted to feel right now?... The destroyer had no idea, and he wasn’t sure whether he was happy or sad not to feel it at the moment.

“I’ll never understand why you are this way,” he mumbled absentmindedly.

“What way?” Blue tilted his head, cursious. His eyes flashed with stars again. The glitch stared into them for a couple of seconds, then turned away and shrugged.

“There’s no fitting word for it. You’re just… Blue. The most anomalous abomination I’ve ever met — not counting the rainbow bastard, of course.”

Upon hearing such a description, Blueberry beamed and let out a loud laugh — bright, delightful and absolutely genuine, as if the tense conversation hadn’t just occurred. He ran his hand over the blue bandanna, as if throwing it back like a scarf, and struck one of this favorite epic poses.

“I know! I’m the Magnificent Sans after all! Mweh-heh-heh!”

The destroyer just rolled his eyes at that but couldn’t hold back a smirk — sarcastic, but not malicious. “You still believe in being exceptional? You do know that Swap worlds make up almost a third of the Multiverse? There have to be dozens of other Blues out there. You’ve even met a few of them.”

“You’re wrong,” Blueberry claimed in a self-assured manner and shook his head. “There are other Swap!Sanses, but the only Blueberry is me! I’ve checked. And besides, tell me, among all of those Swap worlds, is there a Sans like me?”

Error hesitated, staring at Blue in surprise. Why the strange question? Most Sanses shared the face and differed only in clothes and, sometimes, in body shape, but, generally, not by much. And, of course, there were many of them who looked the same as Blue — even his own Papyrus wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. He looked the tiny skeleton over once more, as if attempting to find something he could’ve missed, until his eyes met the big blue ones. Once he realized, what exactly the other was talking about, the destroyer had an odd smile appear on his face. There was only one possible answer to that question.

“No. Not a single one.”


	8. Unseen at First Glance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to:  
> • [Lesya_Sosna](https://twitter.com/LesyaSosna) for the help with the initial translation;  
> • [Glizi Sweet](https://twitter.com/GliziSweet), [Neutralcybertrn](https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn) and [Captain Invalid](https://captaininvalid.tumblr.com/) for beta-reading this chapter!

The artist stormed into his room and hurried to hide the stack of paper he had crumpled in his hands on one of the cabinet’s shelves. Then he looked around the room and — for some unknown reason — hid away all the other papers strewn about, as if someone was about to rush in and reveal all of his innermost thoughts to the whole world. Okay, maybe not the whole world, but even if it was Error alone, the possibility was enough to leave the artist freaked out. If the glitch saw all of this… what would he think of him? Ink froze in the middle of the room, halted by two strange thoughts at once. No, really, what _would_ he think? And, more importantly, why did it bother him so much?

He once again considered the events of the last couple of hours, trying to figure out where’d everything taken such a strange turn — though it had only been that long for him. The time passage ratio in Haventale to that of Underswap was about two to three, which meant the destroyer had stuck around his friends for longer than he did around the nightmares. And he must’ve received his message later as well. Oh, those cursed time inconsistencies! Their home dimensions were way better in that respect: no time meant no problems with it.

But time did exist in Nightmare’s domain, and the artist chose to spend it studying his age-old adversaries in their natural habitat. To tell the truth, he’d never even considered how the Bad Guys spent their days when they weren’t busy with yet another raid.

Actually, ever since Ink had taken up his job, he’d stopped thinking of the ways others entertained themselves at all. He was way too busy living his own life — and the schedule of the guardian of the Alternative Universes was a busy one.

First off, he had to make the rounds throughout _all_ of the universes. Yes, that’s right. All of them. Have you ever tried counting them? Don’t even bother trying. So, this daily ritual took up most of his time. In the course of it he inevitably got tied up here, made a hasty escape there, fixed the errors in the damaged universes and marked the appearing or disappearing worlds on a magic map. He was glad for the former ones and habitually made sure those worlds were viable; the latter ones saddened him, and he hurried to check if there was still time to save them.

His attention, however, was often diverted from his check-ups. There could be several reasons for that, the most notorious being the destruction of a world — either by Error or by Art Blocks. And while Ink simply didn’t see eye-to-eye with the destroyer and never gave up on trying to talk some sense into him — talking to Art Blocks was useless. They weren’t sentient beings, but rather just clots of the Creators’ negative emotions, which held Their darkest thoughts inside.

These shadows appeared as a result of what Ink dreaded the most — namely, the Creators abandoning their creations and destroying them or simply falling into despair over Their creativity. Another core job of the guardian was to inspire the Creators, to help Them develop ideas and keep them from abandonment, but even he wasn’t always able to prevent those awful creatures from appearing. As they filled the collapsing universe they were born in, the Art Blocks often hurried to spread into the neighbouring worlds, so it was crucial to stop them promptly and without hesitation. Besides, unlike the destruction caused by Error, restoring what the Art Blocks had destroyed was way harder, since — in Error’s case — the destruction was caused by an outside interference, and the Creators who liked the universe would help fix it. Or, strictly speaking, it was _Ink_ who helped _Them_. But when _They_ were the ones disappointed in the universe and the destruction came from within… Ink was often powerless to stop it.

However, when it came to the glitch’s attacks, things were much more entertaining. Despite their differences, even if it wasn’t fondness the artist held for destroyer, some sort of attraction was definitely there. He considered the glitch one of those few people he could really reach mutual understanding with — despite Error himself rejecting that notion. Besides, fighting him was exciting. Ink never considered himself a weakling, but Error had been on a par with him for years now, and such a longstanding rivalry forced them to seek new strategies and ways to catch each other off guard. To be honest, it often reminded the guardian of an odd game, and really, he’d always seen this strictly as rivalry and not enmity.

Another adversary — one that appeared less often than the others but attacked in a much more organized and thought-through manner — was Nightmare’s gang. As a rule, Ink did not fight them on his own — one reason being that he couldn’t track them down. Unlike Error, Nightmare didn’t destroy the worlds: he only brought suffering to them — and such energy imbalance was outside Ink’s competence, unless it drastically altered the AU’s plot. Otherwise, emotions were always the prerogative of Dream, who then called Ink for help in such cases.

The second reason was that fighting the whole team on his own was a dangerous endeavour, even for him. Sure, a sufficient amount of red paint could take care of this issue, but the required dose would be almost deadly. When it came to his paints — especially in big amounts — Ink always tried to play it safe, since he knew from experience just how off his rocker he could be under their influence. The red one drowned out the pain of his injuries and brought forth uncontrollable rage, but in such a state he could easily lose control and hurt the enemies way more than he would’ve liked — or, worse, he could injure himself and his friends. So he left it to be used only as a last resort.

But no matter who wreaked havoc across the Multiverse, the fights happened often enough to take up a considerable part of his life — and that’s not taking into consideration the time the guardian spent sleeping and healing — or, rather, painting over — the wounds. If, despite all of that, Ink was given a chance to rest, he dived right into drawing, visited an AU he’d taken a particular liking to, or hanged out with friends. Actually, that last option could include the other two as well — and Blue had a very imaginative approach to these kinds of things. All in all, the artist always had something to do.

Though what could he do while locked up in a place like Nightmare’s castle? It was doubtful that anyone here was fond of art, they didn’t care about the beauty of the AUs, and they only travelled around to wreak havoc time after time. Ink couldn’t imagine those three thugs being friends — much less imagine them drinking tea with cookies, hanging out in an amusement park, or having a sleepover.

No, when he looked at them, he could only think of the Fell-world kind of “amusements”, and Ink wouldn’t have been surprised if they regularly hung out in one of those worlds — though he hadn’t seen that happen, so he couldn’t know for sure. He would’ve definitely written down and remembered something like that.

Huh, come to think of it… he wasn’t the only person around keeping records. The artist was quick to form a plan, though he wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull it off without raising suspicion.

But it seemed like the Multiverse was on his side this time.

After briefly exchanging a few random — mostly derisive — phrases and jokes at each other’s expense, the gang split up, each claiming that, if they were to spend even one more minute in the same room, things would surely end up with someone getting murdered. The guardian was only interested in one of them though. Namely, Killer, who decided to get some air and apply some snow onto the fresh bruises. They didn’t seem to hurt — at least, he didn’t show any signs of being in pain, and his expression remained unchanged: that same old grin that was more fake than Ink himself. But nonetheless, leaving bruises as is wasn’t a good idea. And the fact that the snow around here contained more dust than frozen water didn’t seem to faze him.

The moment the guardian left the castle walls, he felt a lot better — both in terms of feelings and actions. He had a few options: he could ask, get into a fight and take what he wanted by force, or steal it quietly. That last option was considered the safest one, and so, the moment he was alone with Killer, he instantly put the strings into action. No, not as an attack. The strings slithered along the other’s clothes like snakes — without actually touching them — and moved with extreme caution, not giving themselves away. Ink knew from experience gained in battles that, despite the bright blue colour, in skillful hands the strings could be surprisingly inconspicuous, creeping up from behind, tangling up your feet or forming a trap of sturdy nets. And although he couldn’t call himself particularly skillful when it came to using unfamiliar magic, he was good enough to get inside the other’s pocket and pull out the phone. One that, by some miracle, stayed intact after the recent scuffle.

After making sure the phone’s disappearance went unnoticed, the artist hastily fled the crime scene and, after seeking out a safe nook, started to examine the trophy. He soon found what he was looking for: a rather sizable video archive. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time Killer chose to capture is teammates’ life moments on film. At first the guardian considered just keeping the phone, but the moment he thought of keeping the data, the familiar lines of code covered the device right before his eyes. These weren’t the same as the ones he saw in the space of the world though — these codes only existed on the phone. Oh yeah! The glitch _did_ mention something like this, right?

Experimenting with his (quite literally) new worldview, Ink carefully reached into the streams of digits. He didn’t quite know what he was doing, so he had to figure it out as he went, searching for familiar words just like he did last time. A few minutes of intense exploration later, he discovered an interesting function — one clearly useful in the current situation. Copying. A few clumsy attempts to figure it out, and — to the artist’s satisfaction and almost childish glee — the phone’s memory was transferred into the console. Plus, it seemed that he now understood what Error meant when he mentioned “something erasing his data”. He must’ve been keeping some information stored in very much the same way. Come to think of it, this really _was_ convenient.

Not just that, Ink hadn’t spent much time getting familiar with the destroyer’s magic, but he was already amazed by how versatile it was. Anyone who’d seen it in action would’ve probably called it rigid, rough, and good for nothing but destruction. But the guardian knew — and right now he felt it too — that his powers were a much more delicate instrument of interaction with the environment, and breaking things was the crudest way of using them. No, the glitch’s magic was way more interesting. And Ink was certainly starting to get used to it.

After sneakily planting the phone into one of the rooms, so that the disappearance could be blamed on one of the teammates disgruntled by the filming, the artist once again made sure that no one was around and was about to dive into watching the compromising videos, when he suddenly felt like he was being pulled somewhere. Though no, it wasn’t he that was being pulled but…

Without thinking twice, he fell through a glitchy portal — into a random AU, to avoid being tracked — and then followed the strange sensation, easily opening a portal to Underswap. Not just to anywhere either, but right to the sight of his own face. He was surprised that Error called him first — and so soon to boot — but he was sort of glad that was the case.

“You called?” Ink asked the obvious, staring at the destroyer, who was clutching the blue string in his hands.

“Shut up,” the glitch spat instead of answering, pointedly looking at the trees around them, and hurried to add: “Not here.”

Ink nodded and created one more portal — to the Doodle Sphere this time. Oddly enough, it felt like second nature now — the coordinates, that kept avoiding his gaze before, now leapt into his line of sight the moment he thought about a place, and instead of taking up minutes of meticulous searching, the portals opened almost instantly. It seemed like the guardian was already somewhat accustomed to the new way of travel, and he couldn’t help but be happy about it. Even the blurry eyesight and the code that kept flickering in and out of his view bothered him way less now.

While they were gone, nothing had changed, except that now there were a few devices — some of them quite bulky — laying beside the gap to the laboratory. The scientist himself was nowhere to be seen. For a moment the artist considered whether the other was lost — after all, his abode was quite spacious, and getting lost here was easy if you didn’t know your way around. But Sci didn’t seem so short-sighted as to not to take that into consideration, so it was hardly worth worrying about him so much.

Squinting a bit against the bright lighting — a stark contrast to the gloomy universe he’d been in — the artist made sure they were safe and alone, and then almost absent-mindedly noted just how incredibly happy he was to be back in his dimension. He’d never held any special feelings for his home before, but now he clearly felt that warm and cosy feeling you get when you return home exhausted, and all of your problems and worries remain somewhere out there, outside of it. The aura of the corrupted Haventale weighed down on his psyche something awful and forced him to stay on guard at all times, but here Ink soon relaxed, focused all of his attention on the glitch and got straight to business.

“So, what happened? Have you learned anything?”

“Dream confirmed that the portals are a no-go. And he’s not the only one having trouble with them. I’ve told him to ask the rest of the bastards who can travel the worlds about this, but I won’t hold my breath. I really don’t want to be playing dumb in front of them any longer. I’d much rather handle it the old-fashioned way, through strings and threats, but I’d rather not become the laughing stock of the whole Multiverse,” Error replied gloomily, making it clear he saw no appeal in lingering in UnderSwap any longer. “How about you? Got the hang of things? Came across any universes you can’t get into?”

The artist considered his answer. The sensation of the unfamiliar portals was strange, but once he understood the principle behind them, no other issues arose.

Usually, whenever he tried to get into a closed-off space, it felt like hitting an invisible wall. Often he had to break it down — though sometimes it was possible to find a loophole — but if the “lock” was too strong, the one remaining option was using the “key” — or a scythe that belonged to a certain Sans, who didn’t exactly leave it lying around. There’d been a precedent.

Hidden worlds, however, were simply sort of hidden out of sight behind a “curtain” of others’ magic. Creating one was harder than making a regular “lock”, and they were a little weaker, but they worked a lot better, almost fully separating the world from the others. And, considering how many AUs there were in the Multiverse — and just how many were constantly created and destroyed — no one would notice if one of them went missing, unless the universe was famous enough. And finding a hidden dimension without a clear idea of what you were looking for was almost impossible — unless you happened to come across it by chance.

But who knew? Perhaps, from the glitch’s point of view it would feel different — because of the codes, for example — and Ink just hadn’t noticed something out of ignorance? It would’ve been foolish to overlook such a possibility.

“Not yet,” the guardian hummed finally, but his voice glitched a bit, giving away his uncertainty. “Just recently I opened up a dozen random portals just to test them out, and there didn’t seem to be a problem. But I’ve been thinking about that as well.”

“I see you’re having a blast with my magic. How do you like being in my glitchy shoes?” Error asked snidely, squinting. It was meant to be mocking, but he didn’t expect the answer he received.

“Better than I would’ve expected. Your powers are quite handy. I had no idea you’re capable of such wondrous things!” Ink replied with an honest smile, catching the destroyer off guard. “Sure, the glitches burn, but other than that I’m fine.”

“I wish I could say the same,” the glitch muttered. He fell silent for a short while, seemingly stuck in an inner turmoil, but, in the end, he turned away and reluctantly revealed the reason for their meeting in a voice that suggested he was as good as signing up for a death sentence — what remained of his pride _was_ getting murdered, that’s for sure — though it looked more like he was just being stubborn. “Like I’ve said, the portals are a no-go. But there’s no way I’m staying trapped in one universe or waiting for handouts from you. And if my powers are fine, then yours must be too. So…” He grimaced, and the next couple of words were the hardest for him to form — but the way he said them held all the negative emotions he was capable of in his current state. “ _Teach me._ ”

Ink didn’t look surprised. He just grinned, and you could practically read, “I’ve told you so,” in his expression. He faked worry as he clarified, “But I thought you said that…”

“I know what I said!” Error barked. As if he hadn’t been humiliated enough already! However, his tone lacked real aggression — it was mostly dissatisfaction mixed with resignation. All in all, the glitch was surprisingly calm. He didn’t even insult the artist! “Just shut up and explain how it works.”

The artist kept quiet for a while — surely for no other reason than to torture him — not taking his intense gaze off the destroyer and seemingly mulling over this request, but eventually he decided not to torment the other too long.

“Okay, no problem. Oh, by the way, you were in that forest alone. Are my friends okay?” he asked, quite serious now.

“As much as I’d like it to be the opposite, they are. They stayed behind at the Swaps’ house.”

“They didn’t bother you too much, did they?” Ink smiled again. “I know they can be a little… impulsive.”

“Blue’s hugs and tacos could qualify for a spot in a list of torture methods, so I can say, with full confidence, that ‘yes, they did’.” To the guardian’s surprise, Error smiled a little as well, though it only lasted a moment.

“You can say that again. And my body may be immortal, but I don’t recommend putting it to the test this way. Were they fine with you leaving?”

“I told them I was going to get the paints refilled. And, oddly enough, I really do need to.” He begrudgingly pulled out a vial and showed the artist the yellow was almost gone, with only a few drops of it left at the bottom. That was something Ink hadn’t even considered. But the golden colour was always the fastest one to run out, so there was nothing to be surprised about.

“Oh. Okay, that’s not a problem either. But there’ll be quite a bit of walking involved. Although,” the artist squinted slyly and briskly headed deeper into the dimension in the direction chosen for reasons only he knew of, “I kinda wonder what you’ll say about this!” He gestured for the other to follow him.

Due to the lack of options, the glitch followed, though he really didn’t get why this was necessary. There was nothing but the pages of the AUs around — so where and how was he going to get the paint? Not at the nearest art store — obviously — but he wasn’t just going to get it out of thin air, right? Though, considering how yellow and bright it was here, who knew?

Finally, curiosity got the best of him, and the destroyer couldn’t hold back the question any longer. “Hey, ink stain! Where are we going?”

“To the Doodle Sphere,” Ink replied cheerily.

“What? Aren’t we there already?” Error examined the golden surroundings in surprise, but the guardian shook his head, not slowing his pace.

“This place with all the papers — it’s just a part of it. Or, more precisely, it isn’t even a part of it, but… How do I put it?” He spent a couple of seconds thinking, but once he remembered about the glitch’s magic, he quickly found the answer he was searching for. “It’s like an external control panel, which allows me to interact with the AUs. An interface.”

“So, like a console?” The destroyer drew the same analogy, tilting his head in question.

The artist gave a short nod. “Yes, something like that. And the core of the Doodle Sphere… Here!” He came to an abrupt stop and grinned as he examined the border where the yellow light turned into blue-ish darkness.

Error only now noticed the change in the atmosphere and froze in shock. The familiar luminous dimension ended, fluidly changing into a different, way darker one. Instead of papers this space was filled with floating islands. Each one had a door — somewhat similar to the one that lead into the Ruins — and their appearance suggested what world they belonged to. That one was overgrown with golden flowers, with a small tombstone towering over them, and the corresponding door had a Save Star carved into it. FlowerFell. Another island had autumn trees growing all over it, with a rainbow scarf flying from one of the branches, and “best friends forever” carved on a trunk with a knife. StoryShift. A bit farther away was another island, where music came seemingly out of nowhere and a ballet tutu lay by the door. DanceTale.

And so on, even more of them — yet the most wonderful thing weren’t the islands, but the space they were floating in. Instead of the eye-straining glow akin to sunlight, a starry sky, dreadfully reminiscent of the one in OuterTale, took up all the space. By the by, that somewhat futuristic-looking island over there seemed to correspond to the aforementioned AU. Yet only after he took a closer look did the destroyer suddenly realize that these weren’t stars: every light in the surrounding twilight was actually an island — it was just floating very far away and glowing with its inner magic. Ink looked around, feeling a pinch of nostalgia: he hadn’t visited this part of his home in a while — his house included.

“As you can see, there’s a great number of AUs, so using this place to travel is problematic. Going through each door would take forever. The papers are much easier to use though — they’re small, and you can easily find the right one and open a portal. Though I do use the doors sometimes. A paper has to be created for every new world, and I have to find it to do that — which is a tedious task in and of itself,” he explained and smirked at the sight of Error’s shocked expression. “Oh, right… It’s the first time you’re seeing this place, right? I’m sure I must’ve invited you here before, even though I can’t remember it. But you must’ve refused. If that’s the case, let me introduce you,” he spread his arms wide to gesture at their surroundings, and announced, “ _The Alternative Universes!_ ” His voice glitched then, creating an echo, which made the phrase sound even more impressive, as if that had been intentional.

“This… How… They are…” There were thousands of thoughts going through the glitch’s head, but he couldn’t formulate a single one of them.

How could he have not known about this place? It’s not that he was eager to study this dimension, but there were too many things in here for it to go overlooked. However, upon approaching the border, the destroyer seemed to understand what the deal was. There was a barely noticeable magical barrier — not enough to stop or even hold back an intruder, but enough to separate the two dissimilar parts of the single space. Like a small partition or a door between two rooms. And if what he’d seen of the Doodle Sphere before could be compared to an antechamber, now he got to see the whole interior of the guardian’s abode.

And it was a sight to behold. He scarcely knew where to look, his gaze getting lost in the variety of his surroundings. And all of these… were worlds? The same worlds he aspired to destroy? The emptiness boiled in his chest once again, asking for a brighter colour, but right now, quite frankly, he had no idea which one it was. His memory supplied that the corresponding emotion should be one of the darker ones — he’s a destroyer, he’s supposed to hate this place! But… why did it look so similar to his favorite AU?...

Ink took note of the other’s confusion and, after giving Error a few minutes to enjoy the view, hopped down onto the nearest island. “Follow me! My house isn’t far off.” He jumped onto the embodiment of the next Alternative Universe and headed onwards, moving deeper into this strange archipelago.

Just like in the previous location, the gravity here was pretty weak, which made it easy to cover the formidable distance between the pieces of land. And although Error could’ve moved much faster in the artist’s body, he lagged behind a bit, since he kept looking around at the islands flickering past them. The colour and shape of his eyelights kept changing non-stop — to Ink’s great amusement.

The artist wasn’t sure what to make of the destroyer’s reaction, but he was hoping the other would reconsider some things after seeing the Multiverse in this light. After all, how could he hate the AUs if he wasn’t capable of hatred right now?

“So what, you have an island of your own?” the glitch asked after a considerable bout of silence, unsettling the guardian a bit.

“Not one of my own, no,” he replied with a sad smile. “And these islands are projections of other universes. If mine existed, it would’ve been a world inside a world. How do you imagine that happening?”

They spent the rest of the way in silence, broken only by the sounds of their footsteps and, at times, by the melodies of some musical worlds — until they reached the edge of this part of the weird dimension and the atmosphere changed once again. This time Error was even more shocked, because there was… nothing here. Everywhere he looked there was a white void, stretching as far as the eye can see. For a moment he even thought he might’ve ended up in his Anti-Void again, but a closer look revealed some weird roughness, as if the surroundings were a sheet of paper. But the major — and much more noticeable — difference was the absence of the dark “ceiling”. No, it was just as white as everything else, which made the place completely disorienting and no less dizzying than looking into the code.

Among all of this nothingness stood a lone, small two-story house similar to the houses of the regular Sanses, only there was no shed beside it and it lacked the Christmas decorations and snow. Instead, there was a small grassy lawn surrounding it, and the house itself looked like it was drawn with pastels — the colours were just as soft, and one could even see the strokes here and there.

“To be honest, you have no idea how long I’ve been hoping to get you to visit!” Ink couldn’t hold back the almost amazed exclamation, opening the door and finally breaking the prolonged silence. “Of course, I never would’ve thought it would happen like this, but… Meh, doesn’t matter. I have some extra paint in the basement. I’ll be right back.” He took the sash and ran inside, disappearing behind the door inside the kitchen. The door took the place of the really tall kitchen sink, which was absent — for obvious reasons. It would’ve served as yet another reminder of the short stack’s height.

The destroyer skeptically looked around the artist’s abode and instantly knew that, even if Ink had managed to talk him into coming, he wouldn’t have lasted long. The guardian was quite different from Original, but it seemed like he had something in him left over from the classic Sans — namely, his disastrous passion for cluttering up every conceivable space. One couldn’t take a step inside this house without stepping on something. Strewed around and, apparently, forgotten were all sorts of things, art supplies, canvases, as well as extra sets of clothes with paint splotches on them — as if there weren’t enough of them already. On every available surface lay heaps of notes and artworks in different states of completion — half of them crumpled — and there wasn’t a single clean mug to be found in the kitchen. Error happened to hear from Blue that Ink always drew beverages from scratch, with a mug included, not bothering to get rid of the existing ones, so the number of those kept growing with each tea party.

The post-it notes with reminders, stuck on the most visible places, completed the picture. After glancing at a few of them, Error realized that most of them were written by Blue, who, as the notes suggested, sometimes came over and turned this place into something liveable — which, apparently, didn’t last for long. The rest of them were in the artist’s own handwriting and contained self-requests for the seemingly obvious things. Just how bad was his memory?

The sight of this had the glitch shuddering, as if his glitches came back for a moment. This place looked like his worst nightmare — so many useless and unnecessary things, sheesh… Cleaning up this place was probably useless — it was easier to just erase the house and redraw it from scratch. In that regard his abode was way better. No house meant no problems, and he never brought anything superfluous into his Anti-Void. And even if he needed to get rid of something, a single portal was enough to send garbage straight to the dump where it belonged — namely, to UnderFell.

Having barely made his way to the couch through all the mess, Error couldn’t take it any longer and took the brush from behind his back, sweeping all the stuff out of his path, using the paintbrush like a broom. He couldn’t care less that Broomy’s intended use was different and that it was a very crude way of using the tool. He cared about the state of the guardian’s weapon about as much as he did about the guardian himself. Besides, this brush had seen worse, considering how often it ended up broken.

After sweeping the stuff off the aforementioned couch, the destroyer settled down on it and, left with nothing else to do, looked around once more — and that’s when his gaze stumbled upon pages of text. That’s weird… He couldn’t remember Ink being into writing. Picking up a page, he quickly scanned through its contents. The description sounded like one of their fights. Was this… a diary?

“Okay, I’m all… done?” Upon finally coming out of the basement with vials filled to the brim, Ink looked at the glitch and froze at the top of the staircase.

Error… had cleaned up. Yes, that’s right, the room looked as if, in the twenty minutes that Ink spent filling the vials, Blue had worked his way through it. All of the clothes were piled up near the bathroom, and the destroyer actually found a few clean things among them, and right now he was dressed the way the artist usually was, though he didn’t look all that happy about it. The drawings and the other scraps of paper met a much sadder fate and were shamelessly thrown out along with the excess kitchenware. The notes, on the other hand, were stacked into a neat pile, and right now the glitch was busy sorting them by date.

It was still hard to consider the room clean, but there was way less clutter underfoot now. For example, nothing hid away the carpet anymore, which had been previously buried underneath all the stuff. Though, unlike the Original’s, this one had a paint splatter pattern instead of zigzags. But, who knew? Perhaps, they actually _were_ paint splatters, and the real pattern was long-buried underneath the colourful stains. Error wasn’t exactly invested in figuring that out.

“Wow…” the guardian mumbled in amazement, looking around his own house. “I didn’t know you were such a stickler for cleanliness. Thanks, I guess? And sorry about the mess. I’m rarely ever here, and I usually don’t have the time to clean. Well, you know, not with how often you try to erase the worlds and all that.”

“Are you kidding? Getting rid of useless garbage is my calling, and it’s all that I’ve ever been doing,” Error claimed smugly, and, just from his expression alone, it was quite clear just what kind of “garbage” he was talking about. Ink was about to argue, but the destroyer instantly talked over him: “Are you done with the paints?”

“Oh. Yeah. Here you go.” The artist handed over the sash, and the glitch meticulously examined the updated palette. Instead of the single yellow vial, there were three of them now, and the black and pink colours now took up the extra spaces at the very end, out of easy reach.

Error huffed, “Are you trying to drown me in happiness, rainbow bastard?”

“Better safe than sorry. It won’t be good if it suddenly runs out again and you’re not even able to refill it. I know just how quickly it drains.”

The destroyer nodded, putting the article of clothing back in place, and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled out the green vial.

“You’re that surprised?” the artist asked with a soft smile, not about to interfere.

“I need it right now.” The glitch drank a bit of the paint and didn’t hold back his reaction to everything he’d just seen any longer. “No matter how many times I’ve been to your dimension, I’ve never seen any of this! No islands, no house — and I had no idea how much of a slob you are. That’s a pity, since that’s a joke goldmine gone to waste. And, sure, you’ve mentioned more than once that you live in a void as well, but I didn’t think you were being literal!” Error closed his eyes, trying to wrap his head around such a sudden onslaught of information, then he looked at the guardian with suspicion. “Were you hiding all of this?”

“N-not really… I would’ve been happy to show all of this to you, honest!” Ink trailed off and looked away, his expression turning a lot more serious a moment later. His voice dropped a few tones. “But you do remember what you did once you’d found out about the special properties of the Doodle Sphere, right? It wasn’t that long ago.”

“Of course I remember. I tied those pages up and tore them all to pieces!” The destroyer responded with a predatory grin at being reminded of one of his greatest moments of triumph. But then he frowned and tsked in annoyance, crossing his arms. “And it would’ve been ‘farewell, Multiverse’, if it wasn’t for those damned Creators with their stupid truce! They kept your half safe back then, and then you restored the rest. And once that mess with Cross was over, you updated the lock on your dimension. There’s no way I’m getting in here now.”

“I did what I had to do.” The artist frowned as well. How could Error talk so calmly about that? Though… of course _he_ could. “I never wanted to keep this place under lock and key, but keeping such a place open is straight up dangerous, and you only confirmed it. But right now I’m happy that you finally got to see this.” He blinked, and the next moment curiosity, interspersed with hopefulness, flickered in his eyes. “So… what do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think,” the glitch answered honestly. “I can’t think of anything but surprise. How do you even figure out which emotion fits in this case or that? Besides the obvious ones.” Now it was his turn to stare at the other with curiosity — only fueled by the green paint.

“A lot of time, experiments, observations, and trial-and-error. I’ve spent a real long time trying to figure them out, tried different combinations, studied other people’s reactions, and stuff like that,” the guardian answered with a heavy sigh, and Error only now noticed that, besides the mountain of unwashed mugs, the kitchen also housed a lot of beakers and flasks stained with paint — and some of them looked like they were taken from the chemistry lab of their mutual acquaintance. Ink’s frown deepened, and he clenched his hands in nervousness. “I think… I was very similar to Fresh back then. The one difference was that I absorb the emotions of the Creators’ — not other creatures — and I won’t die without them. Well, and I wasn’t drawn to ‘rad’ stuff either. Then I met Dream, and he helped me out with this quite a bit.” He sighed in relief as he mentioned his friend. That period of the artist’s life must’ve been a rough one. And the destroyer could understand why. He grimaced.

“Sheesh… I thought you two were similar before. Soulless, emotionless, way too colourful and, for some damned reason, think that it’s your duty to get on my case, no matter the occasion. Basically, you two are nasty parasitic bastards that I would’ve happily killed if I could. No wonder I hate the two of you so much.”

Ink flinched, as if struck. It… hurt. He held no sympathy for Fresh — and that’s despite the fact, unhindered by moral limitations, the guardian never judged anyone and was pretty cool even towards some of the most unlikeable people. Error himself was a proof of that. But Fresh… was frighteningly similar to the artist. And he was exactly the kind of person that Ink never wanted to be. And no, the colour scheme choices, the lingo and the annoying behavior had nothing to do with it.

All of it was just a mask, a skillfully created image of ease, which hid a very observant, calculating and not at all stupid creature, who was good at planning, acted solely for his own benefit, and knew no mercy. Ink, at the very least, had his paints — a substitute for real emotions — but Fresh had no emotions at all, despite feeding on them.

All of that made him a very dangerous opponent, the one saving grace being that it was impossible to make the parasite angry thanks to his indifference. However, he was quite persistent when anything came between him and his goal. Once, the artist was “lucky” enough to face him in a serious fight. The 90s abomination had long since set his lone eye on FreshTale. It wasn’t clear where the emotionless creature got this intense love for the 90s hype from — but upon entering the universe that was so similar to him, he wasn’t about to let go of it. At first, he only infected the local Sans and took his name for himself then, _freshening_ his image. And then he set to consume the rest of the universe.

Of course, Ink got involved as soon as he noticed something was wrong, but, after a long and grueling fight, the guardian was forced to admit defeat. And he didn’t even have to write it down on his scarf in order to hammer it into his head once and for all: having Fresh as an enemy was a kamikaze move — and immortality couldn’t save you. However, neither of them held any grudges — they simply weren’t capable of it — so in the end they came to a compromise. The parasite got what he wanted, declaring FreshTale his new home, and Ink sort of came to terms with it. It’s not like the parasite’s presence changed the world all that much. But Fresh was encouraged against going into other universes.

Quite obviously, he didn’t heed the order and kept roaming around the Multiverse, but caused way less trouble now. Nothing that couldn’t be solved with a couple of paintbrush strikes to the skull and a mention of the black paint. So, as long as the parasite didn’t mess with anyone, their relationship could be considered one of stable neutrality. And, in some cases, the two soulless beings could understand each other like no one else could. On the one hand, it was nice to know that someone saw the world the same way you did, even if it was through a weird pair of glasses. But on the other, this similarity bothered the guardian to no end.

And hearing the list of their many similarities, quite understandably, made him shudder. Though that comparison didn’t hurt Ink quite as much as declaration of hatred did. He had never cared about anyone’s opinion before, and even the most cruel of quips couldn’t offend him. But now… the destroyer’s words made his soul clench painfully, evoking a feeling the artist had never experienced before. Did it really feel that nasty to hear something like that? Despite having heard these same words from Error before? Ink clenched his hands hard enough for the fingertips to dig into the palms and lowered his gaze, hiding a shiver — and that’s when he realized just what kind of papers the glitch was sorting through.

He snatched the notes away. “Don’t touch those! They’re… personal!” The guardian held the papers close, which prompted a sarcastic smirk out of the destroyer.

“If you cared about these scribbles this much, I doubt they would just be strewed about. Are there lots of these? Do you really keep record of each and every day?” He squinted, trying to gauge just how thick the stack of papers was, and guessed that there must be more of them somewhere.

“No, not every single one. But a lot of them. And I doubt I need to explain why.” The guardian then grew bashful and looked through the dates, trying to remember just how compromising the things described in those pages were. “Besides, since when were you so interested in my life?”

“Since never. But you went through my stuff, even though I’ve warned you to keep away, so don’t act so surprised that I’m going through yours now.” Error shrugged, though he quickly lost interest and headed outside. “If we’re done with the paints, then let’s deal with the portals and get outta here. All of this trash is getting on my nerves.”

Ink nodded and quickly popped into a room on the second floor to hide the notes he had with the others.

While he was gone, the glitch hastily adjusted the notebook he was hiding underneath his clothes so that the guardian wouldn’t notice a thing. There were a few extra pages inside it now.

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder that this is a translation of ["С твоей точки зрения"](https://ficbook.net/readfic/7670171) by the wonderful Sion.


End file.
